I was born in Lawrence, KS to parents in college at the university there. My mother was the daughter of a noted Presbyterian minister and a career hostess; my father the product of a real estate broker and a construction worker. The equation would look something like ivory tower + lunchbucket = me. My childhood was spent almost entirely in Iowa, quite literally in the bosom of America’s heartland. I left home at seventeen and barely returned.
I have always seen the world as a series of photographs; my eye constantly cutting up and reshaping reality in my head. Growing up poor, however, there was never an affordable way to communicate all I saw. Finally, with the improvements in these things we call “phones”, the noise in my head found a way out to the world.
BFULLERFOTO is the product of that expression but it also has a story to tell. The America of my childhood is gone. It will not be coming back. I took to the highways years ago and have spent thousands of hours behind the wheel searching for the soul of a country that no longer knows itself. The unrelenting slavery to corporate greed of the last three decades has destroyed not only a way of life but our people and its culture. Our small towns, farms, neighborhoods, and even our cities are mostly in ruins. Once you get past the gleaming glass towers that dominate the skylines, it’s a grim picture. I don’t know anybody who owns one of those buildings. I’m guessing you don’t either.
America is in a state of decline. It might not be in free fall just yet but you’ll be all day trying to convince me. BFULLERFOTO is a documentary of this process. It is the story of what we left behind; what we sacrificed for the lonely emptiness of modern American life. While I mourn our passing, I see its beauty nearly everywhere I look. If you’ve been wondering what’s missing, you might just find it here.
--Knoxville, TN
3.15.17