When Jason Gould, director of store operations at Lowe's, walks into a store, he sees more than aisles of lumber and paint. He sees a store, and a story, worth capturing. Since 2015, Gould has been on a mission: to visit and photograph every Lowe's storefront, more than 1,700 locations across the U.S.
It began by chance. On a trip to New York, Gould snapped a photo of a Lowe's with the sunrise behind its signature pagoda entrance. A few days later, he did it again. "I thought, what if I just took a picture every time I went into a store?"
Ten years later, Gould has collected more than 160 store visits and photographs, each one catalogued with care.
For Gould, the project has become something of a travel companion during his work and personal trips. It's part travel log, part architectural study, part memory book. "I'm just kind of a collector," he explains. "Each picture brings back something; an associate I talked to, a detail I noticed or a unique design of the store itself".
Through Gould's lens, Lowe's stores become more nuanced. Markers of regional identity, differences shaped by local codes or eras of construction, brick-front facades in one town and sprawling multi-story entrances in another.
In Florida, one of his favorites, he admired a store in Estero, Florida where palm trees and changing facades blended into the shopping center.
In Chapel Hill, North Carolina he was surprised to find a Lowe's painted pink, a look unlike any other in the chain.
Gould's project has also made him a close observer of how Lowe's evolves. He can note when architectural styles shifted, around the 700th store and again at 1,000, and every few years since. He can spot whether a store has new lighting, skylights in garden centers, or the telltale "flip" layouts that mirror the floor plan from one location to the next.
Some visits carry deeper personal meaning. Gould returned to the very first store he ever worked in, Lake Wales, Florida, to capture a photo years later. "Walking in, it still felt the same. I remembered where the paint department was, where I spent most of my time. It just brought everything back," he says.
With 167 stores officially photographed, Gould estimates he's only about a tenth of the way to his goal. Gould admits that reaching 1,700+ may not actually happen, but there are a few must-see stores on his list. Like Hawaii, "One day," he says with a smile, "I'll get there".
