A Day with Kit, JR, their Bus Sunshine and the Diana Instant Square
3 13 Share TweetTo celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Lomo’Instant family we’ve sent some of our instant cameras off on their own adventures. In this article series, a selection of LomoAmigos take us into their unique worlds and show us a day in their lives through the magic of instant photography. Today we’re spending a day with Idle Theory Bus: a duo consisting of writer Kit Whistler and photographer JR Switchgrass.
Most of us living in a modern go-go-go society find it hard to grasp the "radical" concept of doing nothing. In the name of their Idle Theory philosophy, Kit & JR ditched the disruptive, conventional lifestyle and hit the American backroads in their orange Volkswagen bus named Sunshine. Intentionally making space for boredom in their routine, they've been on the road since 2012 living off dreams, magic, and optimism. Their main message: spend less busy time and more idle time.
With a Diana Instant Square camera in hand, JR documented some fun snapshots of a day in their life spent in the backwoods of North Carolina. Ahead of their forthcoming second book, In Search of Freedom, they're here today to share a piece of themselves with the Lomography community.
The following words are written by Kit Whistler.

Hello, and Welcome to our World, where Sunshine is a given, no matter the weather, and chasing rainbows is a daily occurrence cuz, well, we’ve given ourselves nothing better to do.
My name’s Kit Whistler, and I’m here with my partner in crime JR. We live on the road full-time in our trusty VW bus Sunshine, who has been our home for eleven years and counting. We spend our days rambling the lonely backroads of America in search of sanity with freedom in the driver’s seat. If that sounds like a lot to unpack, well… it is.
We’ve been out here since November of 2012, when we hit the road seeking a better, saner way to live. That first year, I had a goal to spend as much time as humanly possible in a state of idleness, or time spent doing nothing. Out of that experiment, I developed my Idle Theory, which states that we humans will, indeed, live saner lives if we learn to balance our time between work, leisure, and idleness.

Today, we’re going to do exactly that, and capture it along the way with our Lomography Diana Camera, which JR is wielding with the seriousness of Ansel Adams himself. You should have seen him when he first glimpsed the interchangeable lenses on this baby. He looked in that camera box like an otter into a pond full of fish and said “Wowie!”
We are all about analogue technology… I mean, we drive a 48-year-old vehicle, so this should be fun.
Currently, we are tracing our way through the Deep South, where green farmland and dozens of fishing ponds line lazy S-shaped backroads. Let’s see what they show us on what should be a typical day on the road.
8:30 am: Lakeside Camp

We wake up somewhere new pretty much every day.
This morning’s camp is a little-used fishing lake in a rural county of central North Carolina. It is the height of spring here, with blackberry blossoms on the water’s edge and a lone duck sitting on her eggs near a budding sedge.
JR and I wake up when the sun rises over the nearby hickory trees. We’ll set our own pace today. We’ve got no-one to answer to, nowhere to be. Just like we like it.
The freedom of mornings like this is, perhaps, my favorite part of this rambling life.
9:00 am: Work Session

We believe in doing nothing… but only when it’s balanced with equal measures of work.
And so, it’s time to do a little work. Which is also kinda like play.
At this point in our lives, work and leisure are blurred, because our occupation is making art.
JR is a photographer and videographer with a penchant for conceptual documentary. I write in a style of prose I call Rainbow Realism.
Together, we print books and publish art and somehow fill our gas tank with the results (this still feels like the biggest honor every time I write it).

This morning, we take a few hours to design layouts for our upcoming book, entitled In Search of Freedom, due out late this summer. The book is a deep dive into the meaning of a road trip and explores the seven values of the road. Freedom is the first value you encounter, which is why it is the title of the book.
I define Freedom as the ability to accept insecurity, because that is the definition that makes the most sense in the context of the road. I love this idea that Freedom is a present-moment value, a choice to surrender to the now. It is true liberation to realize that you can free yourself moment to moment, that freedom, ultimately, is in your mind. The immediacy of living on the road constantly drives that home for me.
Back to the work.
I edit an essay about exactly those Free-wheeling thoughts on the side of Sunshine for a few hours. I revisit the writings of Epictetus, philosopher of freedom, for guidance.
And that is it. Work is done for the day.
In the spirit of Helen and Scott Nearing, who wrote the classic book The Good Life in the 1970s, we tend to work half days on the activities that make money and spend the rest of our days devoted to that which brings life. The Nearings worked for four hours a day and spent the rest of their time engaged in leisure activities and idle time. These two very much inspired me in creating idle theory and intentional life design.
12:30 pm: Hit the Tarmac

Camp is getting warm, and the unknown is calling, so we pack up our papers and coffee, pull down our pop-top, and bid our lakeside camp goodbye.
JR’s picked a backroad to follow. We use paper maps to navigate our travels, because service is scarce out in places like this. Analogue technology. Told you we were all about it.
1:31 pm: Slow for Turtles.

At a random bend on State Road 64, we spot this little guy making his way across the road. It is our personal duty to stop for our slow-moving, shell-encrusted friend, because we are pretty slow-moving and shell-encrusted ourselves. If Sunshine were an animal, I’m convinced she would be a happy turtle, slowly making her way nowhere. This is Karmic business, people!
2:58 pm Ole Swimming Hole

We live by two rules:
• Always go swimming
• Never grow up
So, when we see a river pool with a man-made falls behind, we just have gotta hop our way down to the cool water’s edge. For us swimming is both manifested physical joy and conscious spiritual practice. We get to shower off the heat of the southern sun while allowing our inner child to run wild through the river shallows.
How cold was the water, you may ask? As JR likes to say, “like an ice-cold glass of lemonade.”
6:04 pm Talking Liberty-Town

After all our talk about Freedom this morning, what synchronicity to stumble upon a tiny town named none other than Liberty. I take it as a sign from the creative gods that the morning’s work was good.
Small towns in the south are built on brick and barbecue. Liberty has both, with its original buildings still standing and a silver water tower that Lady Liberty herself would give two torches up. As for Sunshine?
The locals all waved, so I guess she’d get two torches up, too.
We fill Sunshine (and her jerry can) with fuel from the old brick gas station and our bellies with a pulled pork sandwich. Here in North Carolina, they use vinegar-based BBQ sauce, which gives it a twang that matches the local accent. Then, sated, we scoot right outta town.
7:32 pm: Off to Find Tonight’s Camp

There are few things we dread more than looking for camp in the dark, so off we go, down another tiny squiggle on the old dog-eared atlas, to find a new place to lay our tousled heads for the night. It has been a most ordinary day here in idle land. Lots of nothing has been done, a few pages of our book have been written, and freedom’s been sweet in the air with every moment of idleness.
Reviewing the day’s photos from the Diana, I tell JR “These look as free as a floating turtle in a pond.”
And you know, that’s how today felt too, time flowing slow and syrupy as the humid air outside. We don’t have much besides days like these. But my, are they idle…and… analogue….and…free, free, free.

A big thanks to Kit and JR for sharing their words and photos with us!
If you're interested in keeping up with their whereabouts, you can find them on their Idle Theory Bus Instagram. For Kit's personal musings and JR's photography, you can follow their individual accounts.
Be sure to also check out their books & zines on their online shop!
written by alexa_alexiades on 2024-05-24 #gear #people #instant #gear #instant-photography #roadtrip #diana-instant-square #a-day-with
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