ALS Across America · May 18–24, 2006
The people along the Mother Road.
David J. DeJonge’s recovered environmental portrait series joins fifteen people living with ALS to fifteen places embedded in the American imagination.
Pastor Ed Dobson and John “J.J.” Bouma · Grand Rapids, Michigan · May 18, 2006 · Photograph by David J. DeJonge
A campaign built in motion
Not a ride with photographs. A visual strategy with a destination.
Friends of J.J. Bouma and Pastor Ed Dobson asked David how a Route 66 trip could create greater public impact. He designed a sequence of environmental portraits: meet people living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, photograph them at landmarks the public already recognized, and release the accumulating stories while the caravan moved west.
The surviving campaign edit preserves the named sequence below. Its title cards identify each subject and location; the photographs carry the person, the disease, and the American landscape in a single frame.
The recovered sequence · east to west
Fifteen lives. Fifteen landmarks.
Names and locations are transcribed from the original 2006 campaign-film project. Select any portrait to see the complete photograph and its caption.
A note on the count
Mary Free Bed reports that the caravan met eighteen people living with ALS and their families. The recovered film edit contains fifteen named environmental portrait sessions. This page presents that complete named sequence without assuming the two counts describe the same thing.
From visibility to measurable action
The portraits gave the caravan a public narrative.
David served as campaign strategist, project manager, public-relations point, and lead photographer. He recalls editing, writing, coordinating, and uploading between stops so each encounter could carry the public forward to the next.
By the final day, the Congressional Record reported more than $265,000 raised against an original $66,000 goal. Mary Free Bed later reported a final total of $318,000. Bouma also pressed for a local ALS clinic; the collaborative clinic opened in Grand Rapids in 2007.
ALS Across AmericaPhotography by David J. DeJonge · Video by Brett Ellens · 6 min. 54 sec.