Trump Country (2020)

Trump won the election and was sworn in on January 20th and later that year I set off on a cross-country road trip to make photographs of this new Trump Country.

My plan was simple: I would drive from state to stare and wherever I found a sign, a hat, a bumper sticker—anything with “Trump” on it—I would make an image and the make these images into a slideshow. The subject matter would select itself—I would just record what I saw.

Surprisingly, there were few yard signs, the Trump hats all suddenly vanished. Despite traveling through politically “red” states Trump was nearly invisible to the eye—though his actions and tweets dominated the news headlines almost every day and existed as a sort of ever-present background hiss over everything on social media.

People in coastal California (like in the elite universities) find it bewildering that anyone would vote for Trump. Truely incomprehensible. The only conclusion they can come to is that one, these voters are incredibly dumb and, two, they are racist. Somehow forgotten is that these same voters voted enthusiastically for Barrack Obama—twice—one election cycle ago.

But travel the country by car, travel slowly and talk with people, and though they may not be wearing MAGA hats their reasons for voting for Trump couldn’t be clearer out there in Trump Country.