Trucking through a camera lens: Professional photographer captures the essence of women truckers in ‘Sisters of the Road’
She had it all. Award-winning photographer Anne-Marie Michel was living the life that most in her profession dream of. If there is a spotlight or a celebrity gathering, Michel has likely taken his or her photo or chronicled the event with her camera and lens. “If you can name them, I have probably photographed them,” she told The Trucker. Michel’s career as a photographer has taken her all over the globe covering events such as the Cannes Film Festival. She has worked in Venice, Rome and Los Angeles photographing exclusive events, including film premieres and fashion shows — including 16 straight years of Fashion Week. She has also photographed She has also photographed some of the globe’s most memorable unsung heroines for her award-winning Sisters of the Road collection, which she describes as a tribute to the strength, resilience and dedication of women in the trucking industry. Why did Michel choose to photograph truck drivers, particularly women? It all started when she was 14. “My family broke apart,” she said. “It was all a bit crazy and messy and my housewife mother — we couldn’t afford our house. It was one of those things where we were about to lose everything. She moved us to Ohio. When she started, she didn’t think she would be able to do it.” Her mother packed Michel, her three sisters and Jake the dog into a car and moved the family from Houston, Texas to Ohio. Anchored by their newly empowered mother, the family made its way from Texas to Ohio, with Michel navigating with a paper map. “I remember one of those huge maps spread out in my lap,” Michel recalled. “I remember saying, ‘I don’t know how to do this.’” But she had to do it; she was the navigator for the journey. “That was was my first taste of freedom, I suppose — that I was deciding our route that (our mother) was driving us,” she said. That road trip changed Michel’s life in many ways. Not only did she and her family start a new life in a new state, but the images of the highways, from fellow travelers to scenic sights and — in particular, truckers —inspired what she believes is her most personal expression of art. The decision to memorialize women truck drivers came to Michel while relaxing in her London home. “I sat on the couch with my husband drinking a glass of red wine and I said, ‘I really, really want to take pictures that mean something,’” she said. “I was not shooting real people,” she explained. “There is a difference between shooting a fashion model who knows her angles or a celebrity on the red carpet (and photographing everyday people).” And the concept for Sisters of the Road was born. In order to put herself in position to connect with the women she aspired to photograph, Michel realized that she had to make relationships before she could make pictures. Once she began connecting with these women, she found exactly the art she was looking for in the faces of her subjects. “It was just truth,” she said. “They stared back at me with pure truth. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. There was no facade. They were just there. They told me their life stories. I told them my life story … this is how this whole thing came about.” However, making those initial connections was not easy, she says. After the fateful conversation with her husband, Michel booked a flight to Orlando, Florida, where one of her sisters lived. There, she planned to search for her first subject. “I sat in a truck stop for three days hoping a woman would come in and I could talk to her — hopefully she would say yes, and I could photograph her,” she said. In those first three days, she recalls, she literally saw no women. “I saw lots of men,” she said. “On the third day, I was sitting outside in my car questioning my life choices, and I saw a woman come out of the truck stop.” Michel quickly leaped out of her car and rushed to the truck … but that first potential success story ignored her and drove away. Despite that discouraging encounter, Michel’s first Sisters of the Road driver did eventually materialize. A friend of another sister was a driver out of Youngstown, Ohio, and she agreed to participate in the project. And so, in a twist of irony Michel found herself back in Ohio, not far from the home her family moved to all those years ago. Her first driver was photographed in the parking lot where she had learned how to park her rig. “She was really fun,” Michel said. “It was that same energy of empowerment and rebirth. I remember driving off thinking, ‘There is something here!’” The initial plan was to find and share images and stories of five women truckers — but Michel says that once the first shoot took place, the drive to continue creating such personal art burned in her mind and heart. By the time Sisters of the Road was complete, Michel had photographed 40 women, traveling more than 10,000 miles during just over a year. She took the stories of these 40 women throughout Europe as an art exhibit. In 2020 she decided to compile the exhibit into a book — what she calls her “lockdown project” — which was published in 2022. That was not the end of the road, however: The exhibits have been — and are still — being displayed worldwide. The U.S. tour serves a dual purpose, telling stories and educating the public about truck safety. The exhibit is currently at the Department of Transportation in Washington, the last stop on its U.S. journey, as part of America’s National Truck Driver Appreciation Week celebration. Michel says the success of what started out to be a personal expression of photography as her personal art has been, at the very least, unexpected. “I didn’t even plan on showing (the photographs) to anyone,” she said. “Those were for me.” What began as an artist’s purest creative energy is rapidly progressing into Michel’s greatest personal and professional success.
