The Good Citizen

The Good Citizen questions the structures of power and privilege in the United States. It brings diverse narratives into a dialogue by weaving threads of law and policy together with individual stories.

I was raised in the Philippines by an American mother and a Faroese father. Since moving to the United States 20 years ago, I have grappled with my American citizenship and the privilege inherent within it.

For the past decade I have explored this tension, photographing Donald Trump as well as a Somali community targeted by his supporters. Contemporary beauty pageants in immigrant communities denied citizenship until the 1950s because of the naturalization laws requirement of whiteness. Artificial intelligence run border cameras, which are part of the U.S. Mexico border strategy that funnels migrants into the desert, and the personal items left behind by those who died as a result of the dangerous journey.

Through my photographs and essays by critical race theorist Frank H. Wu, we create a disquieting study of what it means to be an American. Following the ripples of our history to our present allows us to interrogate the legacies of whiteness, violence and national character.

A monograph of The Good Citizen will be released in early 2023.