Journey to the Interior

One of the first photographers to delude these values and highlight the ubiquitous loneliness present in American society was Robert Frank (b. 1924, Switzerland) in his series The Americans (1958). In the same manner, Garrett Grove (b. 1982, United States) also examined the current state of the American Dream and accentuated themes of identity and anxiety in the rural communities of his motherland, in his project, Journey to the Interior.

 

The photographs in the series were taken during the years leading up to and following the 2016 presidential election – a time of personal disruption and self-examination for the artist. The images in color reflect the romanticizing of the American working-class in advertising, while the quieter black-and-white landscapes reference 19th and 20th-century American documentary photography and non-fiction writing regarding the domestication of the West. Apart from the socio-political approach to the subject, Grove’s main idea behind Journey to the Interior is his personal interest in rural life near his house in the Pacific Northwest.