The pictures in between

 

I've spent 35 years behind a camera, shooting editorial portraits and ad campaigns in more than 20 countries. The assignments brought the famous faces. The road brought everything else.

 

Most of the photographs here were made between jobs, on the drives, flights and boat rides from one shoot to the next. A motel sign glowing over an empty West Texas highway. A roadside café. Light falling across a desert, a coastline or a small-town street. No client, no art director, no deadline. I took them because I was there and the light was right.

 

Growing up in Hawaii

 

I was born and raised in Hawaii, in a family of creative people. My mom was a fashion designer and art director, and my dad was a PR and ad man. Together they ran a Hawaiian dress business, so I grew up around fashion shows, photo shoots and design. It was all I knew, and it never really occurred to me that I'd have a "regular" job.

 

My first photograph was a photogram of a spider lily in my seventh-grade art class. At 15 I was shooting for the Honolulu Advertiser, Hawaii's biggest daily paper. By 20 I had over 100 tear sheets and had shown work in six gallery exhibitions in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

 

New York, LA and beyond

 

In 1985 I moved to New York to study at the School of Visual Arts. In 1990 I headed to Los Angeles, where I assisted some of the great photographers of the time, including Peggy Sirota, Greg Gorman and Matthew Rolston.

 

By the early '90s I was shooting my own portraits for national magazines, and over the years my work has run in more than a hundred of them, including People, Wired, ESPN and Newsweek. On the advertising side, I've shot campaigns for Comedy Central, Bravo, Showtime, Nike, Adidas and others.

 

I'm a lucky man. My work lets me spend time with some of the most interesting people on the planet. It's like having a backstage pass to life.

 

So why Fresca Editions?

 

This is where my pictures from the road live, separate from my better-known work. Good times with good people on the road in California, the American West, Texas, the Southwest, DC, New York City, Hawaii, China, Mexico, Hong Kong and beyond. Every print is made on archival materials and comes unframed, matted or framed.

 

I'm also sharing pieces from collections I've built over a lifetime, including Mexicana, Hawaiiana, breweriana, paintings, sculpture, and books on art, photography and architecture from my own library.

 

All images © Ian Whitman White, Fresca Editions. All rights reserved.