I’m in the Wrong Film is a consideration of our troubled relationship to the places we belong. The title of the series is a colloquialism that, when spoken, implies that the surroundings of the speaker have disoriented him to the extent that his environment has taken on a disconcerting, fictitious quality. This individual phenomenon is also descriptive of the collective process of re-imagining the American landscape and identity at an uncertain time of declining global power and prosperity. In this photographic series, the rural and post-industrial landscape serves as the locus at which the mythical image of America is displaced by the anxieties brought about by the loss of community, a profound economic crisis, rural depopulation, and traumatic repurposings of the land.

Forced to reconsider their relevance in contemporary society, places that have sustained the ways in which we imagine ourselves now struggle to modernize and, instead, find themselves subject to an erasure precipitated by neglect. Whether by accepting and naturalizing the trends of decline or by attempting to remain viable through homogenizing and commodifying their histories, these locations remain marked by an erosion of presence that hastens an irretrievable estrangement from their own past.

Presented as a constellation of narrative fragments, each image in the series manifests the psychology of a transient character inserted within a constructed environment. The artifice of the construction creates an uncertain space for the character to navigate, opening another point of access to the situation of being “in the wrong film.” In doing so, the staging of the work employs the mechanics of the theater and silent film, wherein the actor’s persona is measured against a décor that provides a context for his performance. Attending to the interplay between the figure and ground as a recurrent device implicates not only the narrative content, but also the intrinsic structure of the image as synchronous sources of the character’s psychological condition. Using the form of the tableau further resonates with the inherent ability of the photograph to suspend time by presenting a transitory moment in which the agency of the character is called into question. In his impotence and perpetual immobility, he is a reflection of the place that is ill equipped to sustain itself against the forces of change.

Upon interrogation, the photographs orchestrate their critique by way of their own failure. Each element of the image reveals itself to be ineffectual. The social narrative of these locations, the performance of the character, and the construction of the image, which discreetly falters to reveal its seams, weave together in describing both the instinctive need and the relative absurdity in attempting to recover a sense of belonging in a time of dislocation.