About Dayton, Parts 1 & 2
Dayton, Part 1 (1995 – 2004) & Part 2 (2016 – 2022)
I had been making pictures in Dayton for a few years before I realized that I was making pictures about Dayton. At which point I sought more deliberately to represent this place as it appeared and felt to me, as the quintessence of ordinariness. Dayton’s population has been dropping for decades, one industry after another has left town, the school system is in crisis, the opioid epidemic has been shattering, the downtown feels half empty on the busiest of days, and the usual register of the city is somewhere between melancholy and despair. At the same time, there is something sweet and worn, tender and likable about it. Dayton is so plain and real that you can hardly even imagine it’s worth noticing. In that way it is much like home, which is exactly what it long ago became for me. I am fond of the place in all its deep familiarity, and I am not at all interested in transcending this; I prefer to look closely, to embrace, and to marvel at it.