Hauling a ’60s-era camper trailer that he renovated and painted to match, Asher Moss recently drove that F-150 10,000 miles through 20 states in five months, photographing nearly fifty gorgeous women in varying states of undress, repose, and exploration. The journey was fodder for Moss’s debut book Miss Lonely Volume 1.
Casting America’s robust and dramatically varied landscapes and interiors as backdrops, Moss zooms in on a particular feminine beauty he thinks is mostly missing from culture today. “I wanted to bring back the authentic woman,” he says. “It’s about shooting everyday girls—not agency models.” Relying on natural light and rich film textures, the lensman’s subjects wore little-to-no makeup; tattoos and blemishes alike were left uncovered. Moss’s appreciation of this stripped-down rawness extends to his editing process, where he eschews Photoshop gimmickry. The resulting moods are alternately curious, reflective, and playful. There’s also a good-natured randiness to Moss’s work, influenced in varying degrees by the legendary photographer Helmut Newton, our dads’ dog-eared Playboys, and the folkie freaks of our nation’s past.
Asked of the trip’s highlights, Moss recalls the romantic vibe a Flagstaff blizzard lent to the day’s shoot in the time-forgotten and eccentric Monte Vista Hotel. Other backdrops include a two-story stack of chopped Texan timber; misty old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest; and the plunging desert plains in-between. What every photo carries is a dyed-in-the-wool rusticity, along with a sense of recovery and preservation. Moss’s art is like a wormhole between 2015 and some reimagined sun-drunk yesteryear.
Yet for all of the photographer’s devotion to the time-tested and restored, it’s present-day technology that has paradoxically been his springboard: 127,000 fans follow his Models in the Morning project via Instagram, and a collection of his short videos whirl on Vimeo.
Moss’s journey has not only begotten a book, but true love as well. One of the initial models he photographed, Melodi Meadows, an artist and creative director, proved more than a muse. “We were instantly enamored by each other,” Moss says. In the subsequent months Meadows paid visits to her trucking beau—in Portland, Los Angeles, and Phoenix—stoking a passion that would eventually prompt Moss to decamp from Nashville to Dallas to really be together. They additionally joined creative forces, forming the production company Moss + Meadows. By the time you read this, the two will have further blurred the line between life and art with a mini-documentary of their road-tripping relocation from Dallas to Los Angeles. Foremost on the itinerary: their marriage ceremony in Joshua Tree National Park.
“People love this wild and free spirit that we produce,” Moss says. “This is how we live, this is who we want to be, and this is who we are.”
Miss Lonely Volume 1 by Asher Moss is available now.
Photos: Asher Moss
