The American Mirage
Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, New York, 2018–2019.
The American Mirage was shot across four cities over two trips between 2018 and 2019. I arrived from Nice, shaped by the Mediterranean, by Algeria, carrying the weight of a myth absorbed through cinema and music long before I ever walked an American sidewalk.
The streets were not what I expected. Not worse, not better: more complicated. A country that has been performing its own dream for so long, with such intensity, that the performance has started to separate from whatever is underneath. In Las Vegas, European luxury brands line a boulevard in the Nevada desert, every car on it completely ordinary. In Times Square, a man lies collapsed on a bench while the city moves around him without looking. In Santa Monica, a woman hides her face in the middle of all the spectacle.
A mirage is not a lie. It is a real optical phenomenon, light bending in such a way that you see something that exists, but not where you think it is. That is what the American dream looked like from the outside.
This series is about scale, spectacle, solitude, and the gap between what America says about itself and what the street was actually saying to me.
Fine art prints from this series are available in the store.