BENEATH A PAPER MOON
The idea of belonging — the desire for it, the threat of it — wends its way through every American story ever told. In her brief history under the name America, this country has wrestled with every manifestation of belonging: how to belong to a new land, a stolen land, how to stake a claim of ownership of said land; how to belong to oneself, how to belong to belong to others, either by brute force, subtle coercion, or by open-hearted, willing choice.
Beneath A Paper Moon is an in-progress photography and writing project that asks how we might all belong to the American story. It is a nation-wide project that considers regional stories through a malleable temporal lens, highlighting unresolved tensions within America’s still young storytelling tradition across the past, present and future. America’s storytelling tradition is expansive, born out of countless colliding, merging and overlapping storylines. Stories are alive — as they shift and evolve across time, they are constantly revealing who we have been, who we are now, and who we are becoming.