West of the American Dream

2026

35mm, Ilford FP4 Plus 125

I took these photos in transit from Texas to California while passing over the vast empty quarters of the country beyond the 100th meridian. Looking out the airplane window instead of at the usual various screens felt rube-ish but also somehow transgressive. Like how as a child I would open my eyes and look around the church when everyone else had bowed their heads in silent prayer.

In these images, we see the blind workings of human effort from above, remnants of a lost civilization etched on the face of the rugged earth like the Blythe Intaglios. Of course, it is the current American civilization itself that is lost out here, out of its depth and flailing across such alien terrain. It is left tracing the ghosts of familiar forms: roads, farms and city blocks become ley lines, wheels of fortune and white pocks where kowtow machines rock and rock and rock. What strange men walk these hulks? Who tends these gardens? What ghosts tenant these bad and sour lands?