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February 14, 2020
Kansas is, as we all know, mostly flat plains. To the east are famous locales such as Topeka and Kansas City (the Kansas side of town). To the west infamous wild-west locales such as Dodge City. In the middle, though, is the quiet, rolling terrain of the Flint Hills of Kansas. Read more …
December 19, 2019
Western Ohio presents a localized study in the modern American suburban-urban/rural split. Farmland of industrial corn and beans is dotted by shriveling small towns, while suburbia encircles the urban centers of Dayton to the south and Columbus to the east. Read more …
November 5, 2019
West Memphis is in Arkansas, across the river from its better-known Tennessee namesake. And there are family resemblances between the two, principally underfunded governments and endemic poverty, but also the presence of a more affluent, middle class constituency. Like so many other places across America, it can be seen as a microcosm of the country as whole. Read more …
September 25, 2019
With a little imagination, one can see the state of Kentucky as a slightly misshapen stone arrowhead, the point of which lies to the far west of the state. Rather than being known as “The Kentucky Arrowhead” or some such moniker, it is instead known as the Jackson Purchase, so named because it was purchased from the Chickasaw Indians by Andrew Jackson in 1818. Covering just over 3,000 square miles, the region is bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the north and west, and by Kentucky Lake to the east, and it is home to a remarkable population of Americans. Read more …
August 10, 2019
Interstate Magazine photographed El Paso in mid March of this year. Then, on August 3, 2019, a lone shooter opened fire at the Cielo Vista Walmart, killing 22 people and injuring 24 more. Events like this jarringly alter a city, as if the entire population were involved in a high speed car crash. Still, while the El Paso of today undoubtedly feels different from the El Paso photographed this past March, those earlier photographs nonetheless capture the same, ever evolving El Paso. It is a city that wears its Mexican roots unapologetically on its sleeve, integral to the warp and weft of the American tapestry. Read more …
July 4, 2019
In part 1 of this series, we visited the people of Trans Pecos Texas. The exploration of this impossibly boundless American region continues in part 2, exploring the seemingly endless land that forms the backdrop to daily Trans Pecos life.. Read more…
June 28, 2019
To the farthest west of Texas, beyond the Pecos River, is Trans Pecos Texas, the bent elbow of the state. Forming only a part of the whole of Texas, the Trans Pecos defies the basic laws of geometry, seemingly outsizing by itself the whole of Texas combined. This photo journal explores the people inhabiting in this outsized, endless land. Read more…
February 14, 2020
The Flint Hills is a grassy, elongated keloid raised from the otherwise flat state, running north-south one quarter of the way in from the Missouri border. As is the story for much of small town rural America, though, the region suffered a bleeding of population in the late twentieth century. The hollowing is visible in the many downtowns and surrounding residential streets, where operating businesses and inhabited homes stand cheek to cheek with their abandoned counterparts. But will the overgrown consume the manicured, will the fallow overwhelm the occupied? Read more...
December 19, 2019
In the west end of Western Ohio, in the spaces between the sprawling acres of industrial two row crops, lie the paper thin husks of small towns that once thrived but now barely exist. On the east and south ends of Western Ohio, spec-sized farm towns give way to modern suburbia. The split between suburbs and urban communities on the one hand and small town rural life on the other prevails throughout the country. It is a split between the world of the rural and industrial, of tangible production as opposed to the incorporeal world of services. Read more …
November 5, 2019
Like so many me-too cities – East St. Louis, East New York – West Memphis shares a name and proximity to its namesake big city, but few if any of the big city benefits. There is no revamped downtown, no conglomerate-branded arena, no must-see hipster neighborhood. But more than that, West Memphis displays a split personality, one that reflects, in microcosm, the great split personality of America. Read more ….
September 25, 2019
The Jackson Purchase, the subject of our most recent Photo Journal, is home to a diverse group of people. From farmers to small-city folk, the people of The Jackson Purchase share a quiet confidence that informs not only their daily lives, but their interactions with others. Read more …
August 10, 2019
The recent, horrific events at the Cielo Vista Walmart have thrust the city of El Paso, Texas front and center before the American people. Interstate Magazine photographed El Paso back in March, before the events of August 3. A city cannot emerge from a horror like the Cielo Vista Walmart mass shooting without being transformed. So how could Interstate Magazine publish the March photographs so soon after that earlier version of the city had been dispatched forever? It seemed a question difficult to answer. Read more…