MADE IN AMERICA. Most people I know have never set foot in a factory. Decades of global outsourcing and a flood of cheap imports have decimated sectors of American manufacturing and hollowed out once-thriving communities. Today, we have little idea where, or how, the shirt on our back was made. We do so much of our shopping and living in the digital realm that we are losing touch with our analog roots. Yet, we still live in a physical world, and we surround ourselves with material things, and many of these things are still made in America. As environmental concerns, national security issues, and the pandemic have become urgent wake-up calls for us to rethink global supply chains, U.S. manufacturing is making a comeback.
Through the past decade, with personal projects and editorial commissions, I have been on a photographic journey to learn more about American manufacturing and the industries that built this country. I have gained access to a world that continues to thrive but is often hidden from view. All of these places share a commitment to craftsmanship and quality that can’t be outsourced. There is, for sure, a certain romance in the idea of making our own goods here in the US, but it is no longer entirely nostalgia; it is also necessity and opportunity.
My photographs are a celebration of the making of things, of the transformation of raw materials into useful objects, and the human skill and mechanical precision brought to bear on these materials that give them form and purpose. They are also a celebration of teamwork and community. There are workers with soiled, stained hands and others suited head to toe in clean protective gear—young and old, skilled and unskilled, recent immigrants and American-born men and women side by side. These are the people who make the stuff that fuels our economy, and in this time of social polarization and increasing automation, they offer a glimmer of hope.
