The In Search of America Project began with a question rather than an argument: what does America look like when understood through the lives of the people who inhabit it, rather than the narratives spoken about them? The work emerged through sustained travel, conversation, and return visits that allowed trust to develop over time.

The photographs in this project are the result of long-term engagement and presence. They were made not to confirm assumptions, but to complicate them. The individuals shown here are not presented as symbols or representatives, but as people encountered on their own terms. Consent, dignity, and accountability are treated as ongoing responsibilities throughout the process of making and presenting the work.

This project resists spectacle and avoids simplifying lived experience into conclusions. It asks viewers to slow down—to encounter individuals before categories, and complexity before judgment. Across geography and circumstance, recurring human desires emerge: to be heard, to be respected, and to live freely.

This work does not attempt to define America. It bears witness to it, as it is lived.