Hitch Hike is a story of an 18 year old boy who hitch hikes across New Zealand determined to meet his birth mother.
There’s a distinct fear associated with hitchhiking both for the driver and for the hitch hiker. One never knows who they are picking up and one never know who is picking them up. When the man aggressively turns his car around after the boy screams ‘fuck you’ at him we can feel the immediate threat and the immediate fear.
Dressed in Nike hi-tops and a bold Yves Saint Laurent t-shirt, it is clear the boy is hyper aware of his identity and is not only out on a quest to meet his mother, but also on a quest to discover himself. While the boy broadcasts logos as symbols of his identity, in a sense the tattooed man does so as well. The tattoos on his face, his body, and hands, are projections of an image that he not only has of himself, at least arbitrarily, more importantly, it dictates how others perceive him.