Keep Going - USA

Over the past 50 years the grand American road trip has become an almost inherent part of the photographic process. In the Summer of 2014 I took part in this rite of passage, both to explore the American landscape and its inhabitants, and to piece together my own personal mosaic of the United States of America.

With an old Soviet-era KIEV rangefinder camera in hand and some rolls of expired film, there was an odd reassurance that like the places and people I would encounter along the way, the resulting images from this photographic exploration would be left to chance.

The USA has an expansive, yet dense, landscape. It is a relatively young country that boasts global domination on both economic and political levels. Against this backdrop, one gets the sense that it is a land seemingly full of proud, courageous, patriots fervently in support of its country, whatever path it may go down. However, throughout my travels across America, I discovered a Promised Land full of insecurity and struggle, with threads of desolation and loneliness both in the places I visited and people I met. Yet, I also discovered a country that is abundant in its beauty and grace, and the ever-present possibilities that both sustain and continually lure its human spirit. It is this America – wrapped in its complex and mysterious fabric – that revealed itself to me and that I present in these images.

The title Keep Going is inspired by photographer Anders Goldfarb's reaction to Robert Frank's The Americans, recorded in Jason Eskenazi's book The Americans List.