The Perfect Place

Identifying as an American has not been easy the last few years. To be born into the tangled and shifting reality that is America comes with an immense set of philosophical complexities to unravel. The past four years alone in American history have been wrought with innumerable social, political, and philosophical upheavals. Writing a list of all the maladies that currently exist in America would be a near futile task to take up. After participating in the events that unfolded in Minneapolis during the George Floyd uprising, I found myself contemplating what it truly meant to be a citizen of the United States. 

Growing polarization, election denialism, police violence, racism, a deadly virus and of course former president Trump, have teamed up to bring Americans a breaking news headline every week. It is as though the cultural threads that bind us together have become so loose that as a country we have begun to experience a profound crisis of cultural intelligibility. As cultural, economic, and political instability sets in, all sides of the socio-political spectrum have become even more entrenched and fixed in ideological extremes. America now faces a culturally liminal space; no one really knows what comes next for Americans but we all can agree that whatever is next will be unlike anything we have experienced before.

I felt compelled to make an attempt to understand this liminal America at a deeper level. I wanted to truly experience the country on its own terms. So I set out on an 8000-mile, two-month solo road trip that brought me to 16 different states across the vast landscapes that make up this complex country. The Perfect Place consists of a selection of photographs and a documentary film that I made while on the road. Key to unlocking the conceptual notions in this project are the core values that I held during its production. Namely: empathy, discovery, and liminality. Through the application of these values, my aim was to pull back the skin and reveal the fullness, richness and authenticity that lies in the soul of America. To discover something deeper about how this moment right now is transforming and reshaping the various colliding currents that make up America.

Meeting and interviewing people from all walks of life across this expansive country allowed me to fully realize how to turn looking into seeing. Asking what sounds to be a simple question “What does freedom mean to you?” I was able to elicit authentic and nuanced responses by the participants. By learning to listen to people I was able to begin to see clearly. As if by opening my ears allowed me to finally see with eyes unclouded by hate. By investigating the external space of the nation I discovered something internal within myself. 

My goal with the images was to portray a nuanced, poetic, and authentic visual encounter with the country. Rather than set forth with a detailed plan and specific images to capture, I allowed my intuition to guide me to whatever would bring me closer to hitting the main nerve. I consider the images in this project to be the blessings of velocity. Visions of the country that can only be glimpsed from traveling its vast nervous system of roads. Drawing much of my influence from Robert Frank’s monumental work The Americans, the subjects in this project primarily depict symbolic and iconic representations of American national identity. Taking a note from Frank, I aimed to capture the humor, sadness, and “Americanness” that one is presented with while traveling across the United States.