With Spina Americana (American Spine in Latin), I am attempting to determine what the people, and their land, of the Central U.S. have to do with contributing towards what I consider to be the “national character” of this country.
In this current political climate, where seclusion and division have gained the upper hand in the national psyche, it is my aim to find the unifying elements not only as Americans, but as a people. As a humanist, I still find photography to be the most efficient “visual mediator” between groups of people who will never speak to one another, either through distance or through lack of desire. I want to see if this region could hold the key to other Americans having a better understanding of who we are as a country, where we came from, and what remains of the collective hope we still have as a nation. This, I feel, can only be accomplished using a spectrum of long-term documentation, highlighting the overall complexity of what is generally assumed about this area.
Thus, I have carved out a 100 mile wide path of land, splitting the geographic center of the U.S. It runs vertically all the way from the Mexican to the Canadian border, respectively, traversing and creating a backbone over the land. This corridor spans a total of around 157,000 square miles. The commonly used expression for this area is “flyover country”, which I find highly demeaning to the millions of people living there, and presumes a land of unimportance- culturally or otherwise.
There is a vast spectrum of individuals and cultures that live within this “spine”, including Native Americans, Mennonites, Mexican Americans and many others. In showing aspects of daily life, I plan on equalizing the positions of mechanics, surgeons, police officers, prisoners, exotic dancers, politicians, migrant laborers, and others, as all contributing factors to what defines this part of the country. I do this simply as an American who is witnessing a level of division not seen here since the late 1850’s, and as one who believes that through the power of observation, divisions can be seen for what they truly are- transitory and obstructive. I am not alone in this national anxiety.
I want this work to be able to contribute to the larger discussion of what makes us Americans in the first place and that being a patriot means the ability for us as a people to still immerse ourselves in groups that may seem foreign or hostile to us at first glance. I consider it a patriotic duty to bring up sensitive topics of discussion in order for us to observe, talk about, and ultimately repair the trenches we have so willingly dug amongst one another.
As a former proponent of “conflict imagery” as a means of ending conflict, I have grown to understand that this formula no longer works as the best strategy towards preventing conflict.
It is my belief that we desperately need to get back down to the personal level, to find the emotional ties that bind us all- the ones that transcend all matters of race, language, nationality, socio-economics, and power. We are a social species, meaning we need that sense of community. Where technology and social media made promises of a more inter-connected world, we instead have seen rates of personal isolation, loneliness, tribalism, suicide, and murder go up in the last twenty years.
Richard Sharum Kickstarter campaign for his new book
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gblimitededitions/spina-americana-a-photo-book-by-richard-sharum?lang=es
Text: ©Richard Sharum
Voice: Ken Hunter (AI)
+ info:
www.audiotecafotografica.com
