Grip of life
Truth behind the wheel
10 years on the road, over 400 000 hitch hiked kilometers, thousands of rides, 25 000 photos. Here are my sources of information as numbers.
The more I have observed the life of truck drivers, first on the road and then also by studies and work, the often have I wondered the respect for the profession.
I have seen thousands of truck drivers. There have been knights of the roads, sweet teddy bears, strange story tellers, sweaty manly men, nice youngsters, shy boys, tattooed guys, snappy old men, frightening chaps and exited women. The common denominator, the fact that connects all these different persons is work on the road. Some of the drivers would need their mothers to stand by them and tell that it’s time to go to bed or the police comes, and other are mean, others rude – just as it is with other people also.
But the good drivers, the true professionals, that suffer the consequences of the other ones misbehavior, are hard working, sticking to their promises, honest, straight-backed men and women, that help keep Finland rolling.
In advertisement polished trucks rush dash through great views in beautiful weather. On the road they travel on even speed while the quicker ones flit by. Big trucks rise high when looking from passenger car. Sometimes you get a tip of passing place by trucks flicker.
The looks of trucks are impressive and the job description often blurry to the outsiders, so what is really going on in the cars? What does it feel like to sit behind the wheel all day long?
In the pictures of this exhibition we climb in the trucks and see what the reality looks like. In the pictures you see the everyday life of truck drivers and the way they carry their work. The work these people are doing deserves to be published. Without them Finland doesn’t roll.
Life on hands
The guard of a big cars cabin has life on his hands – in many ways. The driver steers a heavy vehicle and a small error in steering can be fateful for both the driver and others. Through the load the driver has also other lives in his hands . Drivers grip and dedication keeps us fed. Because of them we have a lot of things that we only realize after they’re gone: milk, gasoline, paper, beer, wood, flowers, factory products.
After years of experience everyone develops their distinct and natural way of holding the wheel. The hand lays in different places and positions on the familiar wheel. You can feel the life of the truck trough the wheel, it’s winding, how the wind catches a grasp of the large side of the truck when arriving from the shade of woods to open fields, the slippery of the roads, all that flows trough steering wheel and bench to the spine of the driver. The drivers have learned to live their lives holding the wheel, carrying their responsibilities and carrying out their duties despite the change of weather, load, feelings, vibes and routes, pursuing the restricted driving time and the pauses mandated in laws.
Sometimes, while observing the varying life of a truck driver, you get a feeling that the steering wheel is the only thing they can hold on to. Besides their word.
In the pictures of the Grip of life -exhibition varies different kinds of ways to hold the wheel, sometimes in dark, other times in sunny cars and in different parts of Finland. To me the grips tell a lot: they are grips of life. Other ones hold the wheel by two hands, other drivers grasp tightly with just one. Some have their hand resting freely on the wheel, some steer with the combination of wrist and finger, and in some cases the steering is done temporarily by knee or elbow. The varying is equal to how differently people think about life: others cling to it so hard that it hurts, others trust – either in themselves or to something bigger.
What is your grip of life? How do you hold on to life?
The grip of a professional driver has influences to many people, but also the way that all the other people on the road drive and steer effects on people around: to the children on the back seat, the old man driving slowly in front, a businessman on the back trying to find a place to pass by, a oncoming truck.
What is your grip of life? How do you hold on to life?
In this exhibition you see the pictures that I have taken during the years. It is possible to organize this exhibition because of the many supporters that also with their own work move Finland.
Birth
Idea
I didn’t start this year thinking that by autumn I’d be “an artist”. The next thing I was supposed to be was an engineer. It just happened, that years ago I started to pay attention to driver’s hands and how they held the steering wheel. In time the idea evolved into Grip of life. A couple years ago I made curtains to myself of the pictures by stapling them together.
Last spring me and my friend (by coincidence the same person who initially inveigled me to hitch hike) went to see an exhibition. We had a conversation that somehow led to the conclusion that my photos, too, could be on the walls for people to see.
I told about my thoughts to the personnel of Jyväskylä art museum, and they said that you’ve got something there. To make it happen, they told me to consider cooperation with my school.
Along
When I introduced the idea to the personnel of Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences things started to happen rapidly. In different companies and organizations people got exited about the exhibition and its message. In a month’s time the exhibition had ten powerful supporters. Jyväskylän seudun kehittämisyhtiö Jykes Oy, Suomen osto- ja logistiikkayhdistys LOGY ry, Kuljetusala.com, Schenker Cargo Oy, KAK – Kuljetuspalvelu Oy, Rahtarit ry, Ajolinja and Vaajakosken autokoulu.
The exhibition was planned to be displayed on the Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences, on Rajakatu, 5.11. – 17.11. We still hoped to find another location for the photos, so that the pictures could be taken somewhere for greater audience to see, audience that hopefully would be travelling. At this point the SOK:s traffic station ABC Vaajakoski came along. By the help of the ABC the pictures get the large audience of people travelling on the road by cars, trucks and buses. They also have plenty of time to see the pictures, exhibition is on ABC Vaajakoski from 18.11. to 5.1.2009, lasting over 1,5 months.
The exhibition has an honorable amount of supporters. With the help of these partners it is possible to make this exhibition happen.
Message
Transporting is one of societys backbones
With this exhibition I want to gather positive publicity to logistics, arouse people’s interest and give a genuine, yet respectful view of the branch. I want to effect on the way how public eye sees the branch and give a new point of view to watch.
I aim to prove that transporting and the drivers are one of the society’s backbones, and that the drivers are important and humane persons. I want to bring other people closer to the big cars wheel and the reality of professional driver.
Traffic safety
With my pictures I also want to raise discussion about traffic safety and peoples attitude to it with the question “How do you hold on to life, what is your grip of life?”
Does the driver’s way of holding the wheel tell about his thoughts about life? Others cling to like a bat out of hell, others calmly and trusting. What other ways are there? I want to bring the question near people, so that when they leave the exhibition they think deeper about their own way of driving and steering.
The same question confronts both the professional drivers and other people travelling on the road: could I do something differently?
Art
Transportation and engineer training are commonly not connected to art. However, I think that creativity is connected to everything: addition to photographing you need it in adapting matemathics, internalizing information, planning a project and writing reports and also loading a cargo in right order, planning routes and fixing a broken car on the road. Everyone has his own way of expressing creativity. Taking photos is just one of the many ways.
I see creativity as a resource that you can direct and that can appear differently in different situations. It is seeing a familiar thing in a new light, picturing situations and ways of action in your head, understanding the deeper meaning of things and combining seemingly distinct things. As an example of the last mentioned is this exhibition, where the everyday life of a driver is art for viewers.
Background
Hitch hiking
The first time I hitch hiked was ten years ago on Midsummer. My friend had to tempt me for hours to lift up my thumb, although we only had few kilometers to go. Now I have a bit over 400 000 kilometers mainly Finnish, but also Swedish and Norwegian roads on my meter.
During the voyage I have seen all kinds of travelers from a little summer car remolded for winter conditions by a tarpaulin (cold) to scout bus (a Swiss scout later send me two kilos of Swiss chocolates).
In the cars have been young, middle aged and old drivers and representatives of hundreds of different professions from reporter to engine driver, from map drawer to DJ and student to football player.
I have been chauffeud by people from different countries, like in addition to neighbors Angola, Italy, Spain, Canada, America, India, France, Turkey and some others that I can’t remember but that have taught me some words for example Hebrew and Arabic, for I have always tried to learn few words of the drivers language.
I have travelled in police cars, fire trucks, ambulances and taxes, comforted just divorced, listened to a father of a newborn and a taxi driver on a silent way back after taking a father of a child dying in cancer to the hospital for the last visit.
I have seen a man who had spend years in prison and found religion, met other hitch hikers on crossroads, found myself as a guest of a Norway’s Samish grandma and eating dried reindeer meet and ended up to a nationwide biologist meeting with a student bus.
I may never have been a typical hitch hiker, despite my kilometers. To me hitch hiking is not heading home from festivals with lift because money and friends have disappeared and it feels so fuzzy that no reasonable ideas would come to mind. I have though hitch hiking is more: it’s communication and travelling, an educational adventure.
The philosophy of hitch hiking
The best part of hitch hiking has been the encountering people, the thousands of stories and guidelines in life they have shared with me and as a whole, the amazing friendliness. Some of the meetings have been short and impressive, but I have also found long-lasting friendships on the road. Almost every lift has taught me something.
Life and hitch hiking seem to have surprisingly many common features: sometimes you feel stuck in place, but you never know what will happen next and what will appear after curve. For sure is that in some way both the life and journey go forward.
They talk a lot about controlling life, but you just can’t control life. Neither can you control hitch hiking. In both you can influence the situations yourself by functioning reasonable and making considered choices, but the result is in other hands. When all what’s possible has been done you just have to wait, keep your mind positive, thumb up and hope for the best.
Doesn’t it sound just like applying for a job?
In life and hitch hiking it’s important to be open to the possibilities that you get and dare to jump into ride when something great comes by. You’ve got to trust that life carries.
While hitch hiking it really is worth planning the route and estimate by the amounts of traffic what route is the best for achieving the goal. You want to choose your hitch hiking place by the possibilities for stopping and speed limits. And it’s just good to say no to ride if it would only take you three kilometers and leave you out on a dark place when it’s 30 degrees cold. Also you can and must choose the drivers. I look people in the eye and then decide what to do. While in shop you also circle the person that is in some way strange?
Many drivers ask me if I’m not afraid of hitch hiking. When I respond that I’m not afraid of you, either, they reply that you don’t need to be afraid of me, but everyone else. As if only the unknown would be dangerous and they themselves the nice ones.
It appears that there has always been a little engineer inside of me, for I have for many years marked my kilometers to an excel-document, where I have also examined statistically for example the type (man, woman, group, truck), travelling time and speed per hour. Based on these I can say that I have hitch hiked quite precisely 422 000 kilometers and therefore moved in ten years time every hour about 4,8 kilometers. (As taxi trips I have saved a huge amount.) On an average one car has carried me for 88 kilometers, so there have been roughly speaking 4800 rides. (Thanks for everyone.)
Encountering transport branch
On the grounds of my experiences in most cases a car stopping for hitch hiker is a passenger car with a driver over 30 years old coming from work or going to work. With passenger cars the rides are often short and the longer distances are often covered with trucks. Thus the occupational group of truck drivers has become quite familiar for me over the last ten years. The reason is simple: you rarely end up in same passenger car twice, but the truck drivers you see again and again, for many of them have been on the road all of the time I have hitch hiked – and many of them still friendly offers a ride.
In many of the passenger cars people are horrified that I dare to climb up to a big car. I think the opposite way: the drivers are working, the company name is on the side of the car and the moves of a driver are all the time recorded to driver’s log. Also the driver is in most cases experienced driver, many of the drivers gather many tens, even hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
First when I was travelling in trucks I was wondering the complicity of the branch: behind the wheel there is a man, that says that he’s just a hired man, the owner of the car is somewhere else, the car is owned by a bank and the loads are handled by yet someone else. It seemed to be a big mystery and that was of course interesting. It required thousands of kilometers and questions that I started to understand what’s going on and the answers always raised more questions.
Anyway, time passed by and I was watching the drivers, listening the conversations, visiting terminals and factories, observing everything, asking a lot and learning all the time. Finally the only natural way was to study logistics.
The pictures
After the exhibition the pictures are for sale. If you are interested in a certain picture, please contact the photographer.
The money got from selling the pictures are going to be spend to cover the expenses of the exhibition and addition to that to raising the photographers driving license. The course for C-drivers license begins 10.11.2008. The goal is totally in line with the message of the exhibition!
Opening hours
Exhibition in display:
5.11. – 17.11.2008
Jyväskylän ammattikorkeakoulu
Rajakatu 35, Restaurant Avec
mon – fri 7:15 – 18:00
sat 7:45 – 14:00
18.11. – 5.1.2009
ABC-Vaajakoski
Vaajakoskentie 850
Open 24 h
The photographer
I’m Johanna Paaso, a student of the training program of logistics in Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences. I’m graduating as an engineer of logistics in spring 2009.
I got my first digital camera, Canon Digital Ixus 400 in autumn 2003. Taking pictures got me carried me away instantly and started learning to use my camera in different situations. In June 2006 I used a large amount of my student budgets money to buy a new camera, Digital Ixus 800 IS, that still travels with me all the time.
I’ve photographed a few occasions, like weddings and funerals. I have also tried to put my hobby in use in my duties in school and work. Taking pictures creates balance in my life counterbalancing the concrete role of an engineer.
I think that with a picture you can capture a powerful memory of the moment – and at the same time the picture can talk its own language to everyone watching it.
Contact information regarding the exhibition:
- email: otteitaelamasta@gmail.com
