About America

…continue through the neon circus, now that dusk is falling, we will exit & return to a different world, one which we did not leave, but we must leave behind…

It can be funny how the passage of time can change how one looks at a photograph, or a series of photographs. These things we make, these slivers of time and space we steal forever, somehow still lack a complete sense of permanence. Like the photograph itself & what the full-frame excludes, our relationship to its content becomes subjective to time.

As I look back on this series now, I choose to show the times I would endeavor to create a portrait that was as much of the scene as its subject. It is both that these people interact with these places & how they are interacting. I feel at this time & point, the definition of being an ‘American’ is as fraught as ever, making the act of defining America in photographs very much about the relationship between the people & the place.

Some of these are friends, some of these are strangers, but it’s this particular gallery as a whole that seems to be more about this iteration of the project, which I suppose is more akin to the idea of a society than anything.

—cs, 08/2021