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Private Residence (owners deceased), south. November 4, 2008. Copyright © 2010 Ryan Donnell.

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When photographer Ryan Donnell moved to Philadelphia, his local polling station was housed in an Italian-American social club.

“The first time I walked in I was greeted by two huge guys smoking cigarettes and eating donuts,” said Donnell in a recent interview with Eat the Darkness photoblogger Matthew Ratajczak. “Photos of Frank Sinatra and bikini-clad women adorned the walls and our two polling booths were stuffed amongst a folded up ping-pong table and some faux leather couches. I remember thinking: A) Whoa B) This is cool as shit and C) Man, this is weird.”

Funeral homes, auto-repair shops, skating rinks and bakeries are not the locations that spring to mind when we picture buildings that represent American democracy. Each election cycle, thousands of quirky, temporary polling stations sprout up in every American town and city. These rooms are where democracy meets the street.

The idea to record these unusual polling stations cropped up in 2006 in conversations between Donnell and his wife, who is the City Hall Reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News. They put the idea on ice for a couple of years while Donnell was getting out of the freelance game and building a commercial editorial photography business. When 2008 came around with its momentous sense of history, Donnell knew it was the right time.

“The Philadelphia Elections Board actually posts a list of all the polling stations and every place has a small description next to the address, such as ‘Residence’ or ‘Storefront’ or ‘Water Department Laboratory,’ says Donnell. “So I made a list of the weirdest sounding places, packed-up my Hassy, tripod and film in my car and basically just drove all over the city of Philadelphia for about 10 hours on Election Day. I’ve done that every election since November 2008.”

Just hanging around polling stations isn’t as easy as it may sound. Support from the Philadelphia Elections Board is not something Donnell feels he has. “Every election it’s gotten harder and harder to talk my way into the polling stations with the camera…. It’s gotten worse in the past year or so.”

Technically, in Philadelphia County, a member of the media has to register as a poll watcher with the Elections Commission in order to gain access to a polling station. To bypass this hurdle, Donnell relied on years of experience chatting with strangers, often talking to the appointed Judge of Elections at each station. Donnell describes the judges running each station “as if it were a little fiefdom.” His novelty value often won them over,

“The amount of or type of equipment you carry helps. How many non-serious people carry around $4,000 worth of photo gear into the ghetto to photograph people voting?” he says.

Donnell was always able to shoot from the street on public property, but getting access inside was a lot less predictable. Sometimes, he was turned away by polling officials not even willing to speak with him. Others welcomed him heartily, asking, “What TV channel are we going to be on?” Donnell took what he could get, with plenty of locations to choose from. “At times, there was a lot of pleading on my part and also a lot of killer locations that I never got to photograph,” he says.

Photography in and about U.S. polling stations is not solely Donnell’s pursuit. In 2006, the Winterhouse Institute, which develops and supports political and social advocacy, initiated the Polling Place Photo Project. The experiment in citizen journalism encouraged voters to capture and share images of primaries, caucuses and elections. It received backing from The New York Times in 2008. The Polling Place Photo Project archive now includes almost 6,000 photographs, representing all 50 states, as well as Americans voting abroad.

Even so, Donnell has probably captured some of the most unusual polling stations. Behind the Curtain: The Philadelphia Polling Project was a lot of fun for Donnell. Free of the expectations of clients, he pulled out the Hasselblad he rarely uses for paid gigs.

“I wanted a little slower pace: Loading the film, taking meter readings. And I just love that camera,” he says. “I think the square format works well for the spaces in which I was shooting. It has this feeling of looking in through a window, like a diorama, almost. I shot all of it with a 50mm lens, too, which is weird, because I’ve used that lens maybe twice before this project. It just felt natural.”

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You’ll find Matthew Ratajczak’s full interview with Donnell on Ratajczak’s blog Eat The Darkness.