American Value is an ongoing photographic project that aims to confront the prevailing discourse of American cultural, social, and political fragmentation.
Beginning in 2017 in the wake of a decisive national election, this work operates on the premise that the act of seeing—of engaging with communities through an intentional and visually compelling lens—can serve as a corrective to entrenched assumptions and oversimplified narratives.
Rooted in the traditions of vernacular photography and typography, American Value draws on the visual language of everyday signage, local advertisements, and hand-painted messages that can define these landscapes. By incorporating these elements, the project highlights the ways in which communities articulate their own identities beyond common perceptions or representations. This approach not only preserves the aesthetic and rhetorical nuances of these spaces but also challenges the clichés that may be imposed upon them.
By insisting on a more nuanced and visually striking representation of these environments, American Value pushes back against the intellectual detachment and aesthetic complacency that often govern discussions of place, culture, and worth in contemporary America, while also seeking to unify through shared, familiar elements which can be powerfully rendered and invite novel ways of seeing the environment.