Illinois 37 Looking South, South of Alma, IL
Interstate Magazine has a clearly articulable goal: to capture the American Identity in photographs. It’s a simple enough premise, but reflect for a moment on the significance of an American identity, and you may be left wondering, in this big country, does such a singular identity exist? Is there an American identity? Interstate Magazine thinks the answer is, in the aggregate, yes, but revealing it is complicated by the shear size and diversity of America. America is vast in both person and place.
Physically, the “Lower 48” of the Untied States covers just under three million square miles. It stretches from Key West, Florida to Bellingham, Washington; Calexico, California to Caribou, Maine; Falfurrias, Texas to Westhope, North Dakota. Add to that Alaska, Hawaii and the territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands (all of which have United States Courts, US Dollars and American passports), and the area swells to roughly four million square miles, all one country. By contrast, Europe in the same space encompasses 50 different countries. And few would disagree that France differs from Germany which differs from Greece which differs from . . . .
Traveling America, one encounters mountain ranges and rolling hillside, high plains and prairies, swampland, deserts, and forest. Between the East, West and Gulf Coasts there are over 12,000 miles of coastline, plus a thousand more on the Great Lakes. There are 15,000 miles of rivers, counting only the ten longest. Vast stretches of the west are arid, seeing less than 10 inches of rain annually, while the Pacific Northwest and Gulf Coast are regularly drenched with upwards of 100 inches yearly.
Trout Fisher, Roaring River State Park, MO
In human terms, America is home to some 325 million people. Eighty percent of Americans live in urban areas, despite the fact that such locales account for only three percent of all land. In places like New York City and San Francisco, population densities run as high as 27,000 people per square mile, while in relatively roomy places like Butte, Montana, there are less than 50 inhabitants per square mile. State by state, population densities run from over 1,000 people per square mile in New Jersey, to six (yes, six) per square mile in all of Wyoming.
Eighth Avenue outside Carve Sandwich Shop, 2:34 pm
Throughout it all, one finds farmland and mines, factories and ateliers, Main Street shops and high-rise office buildings, all populated with a variety of farmers and miners, assembly line workers and craftspeople, shopkeepers, insurance sellers and bankers. Fishing villages house lobstermen in New England, crabbers in the Pacific Northwest and shrimpers on the Gulf Coast. Artists find homes in inner city enclaves, and white collar workers and tradespeople populate suburbs.
Odeon at Center Street, Tucumcari, NM
While the vastness of person and place harbors no obvious singular American identity, the diverse human and physical geography does include recognizable regional and cross-sectional identities. Illuminating the persons and places forming the array of American regions – the job of the “place” section of the magazine – will reveal over time the convergent elements of America’s seemingly divergent identity. Likewise, explorations of the varied sub-cultures and institutions found throughout America – the job of the “cross section” portion of the magazine – will further reveal an aggregate American identity, independent of place.
And so, from the agglomeration of geographic and cross-sectional identities, an outline of a larger, more unitary American identity may emerge. In the end, no single image could hope to encapsulate a unanimity from such heterogeneity, but a collection of such images, spanning the spectrum of American physical and human geography, can.