America’s Weirdest Polling Places
Farm sheds, pool halls, auto-shops and laundromats
What’s one more thing to love about elections? Des Moines-based photographer Ryan Donnell says it’s the voting booths. When Ryan and his wife moved to South Philadelphia, they voted in an old Italian social club. Having lived in St. Louis and Texas, Ryan had voted in churches, fire stations, and community centers, so this new location took him by surprise. He’s now been all over the place, and seen what it’s like to vote in hotels, restaurants, laundromats, and more. Here’s to all the quirky polling stations of the world!
This project was a bit of a personal exploration for Ryan. He studied photojournalism in college, and though he had transitioned into more commercial work, he loved the style and look of documentary photography. Ryan says he looks to photographers who let the environment play a huge part in telling the story for inspiration when he thinks of a documentary approach. Shooting the polls was a nice departure from his more action-oriented shots — it was a practice in setting up, standing, and waiting.
Ryan’s planning for the polls was extensive. He’d research potential locations by combing through spreadsheets of polling stations in various cities. Because he lived in Philly at the time, he could scout the locations there in person. But for places like Chicago and LA, he’d have to contact the county election offices, get the databases, and use Google Maps to narrow in on where he’d be photographing. He’d fly out, then the day before that city’s election he’d drive to each of the polling stations on his list, creating a route for his shoot the next day.
“Between Chicago and Los Angeles, I think I put nearly 1200 miles on rental cars over four days.”
Ryan got a big kick out of seeing the breadth of polling stations out there, and the diversity of people volunteering and voting. There was something special about seeing that our democracy really does take place where people live.
It’s all there — from basements of deceased people in South Philadelphia to farm sheds in Iowa to the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Election officials would sometimes get testy with me since I didn’t have an official news organization that I was working for, so it often took a little charm to get into polling locations. But generally, access hasn’t been the problem and most people liked the idea that their polling site was weird.
Ryan has taken a break from his polling places for now, but he hopes to continue the series across more areas in the country and even beyond. “I’d really love to expand it to foreign countries as well and compare and contrast American voting with voting in other places. That would be way cool,” he says. We think so, too.
View more of Ryan’s work, at ryandonnell.com.
David Schonauer is Editor of Pro Photo Daily and Profiles. Follow him on Twitter. Follow Pro Photo Daily on Facebook. Sign up for the free Pro Photo Daily Newsletter. Follow Jeffrey Roberts, publisher of American Photography (AI-AP), on Twitter.
