On a formal level, I am very conscious of the compositional armature on which the content rests. I believe the most successful images embrace the two-dimensional space of the photograph, and certain formal techniques help make that possible. It makes sense why I was always drawn to the 8x10 camera (although now I'm also using a Phase One IQ4 with a tech camera). Sometimes my images belong in a series of images with a strong conceptual motivation, while others are almost entirely formal experiments that serve as a pause or a beat in a more heavily freighted series of images. Usually the symbolism of my images is subtle, with their formal concerns often taking a front seat. Lately though, my work has taken a more explicitly topical turn.

Last fall, deeply troubled by the state of our country and its future, I decided I needed to channel my anxieties and turn my lens on an America in crisis and make a body of work that was more explicitly topical than what I had done previously. Of course, there is a long tradition of such endeavours throughout the history of photography in America. Many of the most notable works in the first half of last century were lauded for a new objectivity, but this objectivity was the product of privilege. Consideration of the conditions that allowed for this “objectivity” were conspicuously absent from the content. I hope I can approach this project in such a way that allows for my privileged subjectivity to be interrogated in the analysis.

While our divisions are more starkly apparent in the age of Trump (exemplified today in so many ways, and certainly to be made more so in a post-COVID environment), the reality is that America has been manifesting, exploiting, and even weaponizing divisions since its founding. The grand American narrative and its illusions are at odds with the lived experience of most Americans, and symbolic and literal marks of that contradiction are rendered throughout our landscape.

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