Artists Registry

The Un-Americans:

This body of work is the result of eight years of walking the streets and snapping pictures at the extremities of American's rural and urban landscapes, in places as diverse as Dallas, Texas, New York City and Munfordville, Kentucky. This simple act, repeated weekly, has meant that I have captured a portrait of the American people at their most patriotic and paranoid. It is my goal to capture the ever-increasing, paradoxical nature of our American culture, using the rainbow of human emotions as a springboard. Americans are funny and angry and ironic. In creating "The Un-Americas" I have concerned myself with what conclusions can be drawn from the social trends and economic policies that define this era and I have attempted to capture exactly what it has been like to live through what was a major shift in the American character.
In order to accurately and expressionistically reflect the tensions of this era, I chose a simple, automatic point-and-shoot film camera with a focus lock. To emphasize this point, I have enlarged each image to 30x40 inches. At that size, the grain of a 35mm negative is clearly visible and the image visually falls apart. It was important that these complex meditations look and feel vernacular to the core – as though they were taken by somebody's uncle.