Why did you pick me up?

Chris Coekin has hitchhiked the length and breadth of the UK and across Northern Ireland, in a series of trips, since 2000. His journeys have taken him as far as John O'Groats to Land's End, at times in gruelling conditions. The resulting work provides a record of his adventures and observations. Coekin used two different cameras to make the work featured in The Hitcher. A small snapshot camera, often with the self-timer, was used to record self-portraits, and to document roadside finds. A professional, medium format camera was employed to take photographs of the people who have made the impulsive decision to give him a lift. Cardboard signs, scribbled onto old cereal packets, serve as indicators of his travels. In the process of making the work, Coekin becomes both protagonist and performer --though unlike the hitchhiker in the 1986 horror film of the same name, his travels lead him not to murder, but to make a body of work.