The In Search of America Project

In March 2015, I set out to find the answer.

Over the next six years, I crisscrossed the United States, driving more than 350,000 miles through cities and small towns, along forgotten backroads and lonely highways, searching for something beneath the noise of our increasingly divided country.

What I found was not a political argument, but something far more human.

I spent years sitting across from strangers in roadside diners, on front porches, in churches, shelters, homes, and small-town cafés. I listened far more than I spoke. I met people from every walk of life, including many living on society's margins—people whose stories rarely make the headlines, yet whose lives revealed something essential about the country we share.

Again and again, I encountered fear and hope, loneliness and resilience, hardship and compassion. And beneath our differences, I found something far more enduring: our shared humanity.

These are not headlines.
They are not sound bites.

They are the stories of real people.

Everything presented here is grounded in firsthand experience and years spent listening rather than arguing. What began as an attempt to understand our divisions ultimately became an exploration of the connections that remain between us.

That journey became the foundation for America Found: A Journey From Division to Connection.

But the photographs came first.

They are the record of the people I met, the places I traveled, and the conversations that changed the way I see this country.

These are the photographs of that journey.