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, 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?

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.

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.

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.

This past March, as part of Interstate Magazine’s coverage of Trans Pecos Texas (see parts one and two), I photographed the people and place that is – or was – El Paso, Texas. But that was all before the horrific events of August 3 at the Cielo Vista Walmart changed El Paso forever. What does that mean for the photos from March?

Texas is a big state, the biggest of the Lower 48, covering over a quarter million square miles. From the Gulf of Mexico in the south to the high plains of the north, the Chihuahua Desert in the west to the bayous in the east, Texas wears robes of discordant design. To the farthest west, 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.

From identical twins and mere siblings, to cousins first and far removed, to unrelated souls of like lineage, to random pairs of persons, at any point on the spectrum differences both subtle and manifest exist between any two people. One can mount little counter argument here. But what of the single individual? How singular is he? How true is the statement that “John Doe is John Doe”? In truth, it is not – visually, at least.

In many ways, LA 1 reflects all of America beyond it. The route traverses numerous, distinct domains, each Louisianian but each decidedly its own. The inhabitants of the timber and oil environs of the northwest share more in common with their fellow cattle ranchers and oilmen in Texas than they do with the Cajuns inhabiting southern LA 1. The shrimpers of the Gulf share more perhaps, with fellow fishermen working the Gulf in Mississippi and Alabama to the east than they do with the sugar cane and chemical plant workers found midway along LA 1.

The geography and things of a place form a stage upon which we strut and fret our respective hours. Capturing the details of that stage is important, but if one hopes to convey a full sense of a human place, then capturing the people playing upon that stage is even more important. We must photograph the people to show the place, but who do we photograph and how do we do it?

East Saint Louis is in Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from the Saint Louis of Gateway Arch fame. It is a deflated, decaying former city, now more vacant than vibrant. Twice I traveled to the city to photograph it. Only once was I detained by police there.