For anyone growing up in the 1980s, the trademark angular roof of a Pizza Hut restaurant was impossible to miss. But what’s become of all these “iconic” buildings? How are they now being used? And how have they blended into the landscape? Australian photographer Ho Hai Tran and his collaborator, Chloe Cahill, a creative director, have set themselves the mission of documenting the last remaining Pizza Hut buildings before they disappear altogether. Their “Pizza Hunt” has taken then around the world, only to discover that a handful of them are still enjoying second lives as grocery stores, pawnshops, gospel churches and mortuaries, like Olsen’s Funerals in Revesby, NSW.
The Pizza Hunt project began rather humbly after Tran spotted and photographed Seoul Korean Restaurant in Belfield, the first dine-in Pizza Hut built in Australia. Since then, he has travelled more than 14,000 kilometres between Australia, New Zealand and the USA in order to photograph the remaining structures. To date, over 100 ‘huts’ have been documented. “It really is a race against time for me to find and photograph these buildings before they are demolished and lost to history,” Tran says.
Two years since starting the project, Tran and Cahill have recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the publication of a book – their aim being to raise $20,000. The Pizza Hunt project is Tran and Cahill’s ode to Pizza Hut, and a nostalgic visual record of the iconic structures which are synonymous with the pizza chain.
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