A few years ago I noticed the prominence of the colors red, white and blue in the images I'd captured while traveling the western United States. At the same time I'd been photographing much of the now faded and tattered flag iconography that had sprung up in the wake of 9/11. The unintended symbolism was hard to ignore, as the wars dragged on and the politics of division allowed the hopes of average folks - the folks who paint things red, white and blue and who tape miniature flags to their car antennas - to fade, just as the bumper stickers and decals had faded.
The subject of this series is my culture, contemporary America, and the things that endear me to it, including its foibles, its flaws, and its persistence in the face of adversity. With these images I examine the everyday evidence of uncelebrated life here - landscapes and artifacts created by the otherwise unseen forces of convention and sentiment, economics and government policies. I believe that what we see every day, usually without stopping to think about it, says a lot about our values, beliefs and priorities.
The many scenes in this series depict life in America as witnessed from "Main Street", where infrastructure is crumbling, surveillance and security apparatus are ubiquitous, the economy does little to sustain the bottom 90%, and yet a reflexive vernacular patriotism prevails.