For Name Sake

The photographs in For Name Sake depict scenes from the western half of the United States that offer a critique of the American Dream. These images are intended to provoke the question, “what is next”? With a failing government structure and a shrinking middle class, does the American Dream exist? Did it ever exist? Or was it always just a mirage that got numbers of people to devote their lives to a labor force that benefits the one percent? Focusing on the imagery of corporate structures rather than the individual, For Name Sake confronts the notion of buying into the machine of capitalism and the understanding that the American Dream is purchased. The images are ambiguous, stripped of context and place, offering a satirical play on notions of capitalism and assimilation. Informed by photographic history, and photographers like Chris Maggio and Christopher Williams, these images play up their banality in order to establish a critique through the use of irony.