Made in USA: Textiles | Project Statement

Over the past ten years, I have photographed America’s vanishing architecture and industrial landscape, trying to convey, in an artful way, the significance of places most people do not have the opportunity to see firsthand. Given my background in architecture, I have a natural interest in how things are purposefully designed and constructed, and how they work—whether a machine, a building, or in the case of the asylums, a self-sustaining community, where almost everything of necessity was produced on site.

An extension of my previous projects has been an interest in manufacturing and the role of manual labor and craftsmanship in the contemporary workplace. Currently I am focusing on one industry—textiles—to show what “Made in USA” means today. As America’s first industry, textiles ushered in the industrial revolution and helped the infant country gain economic independence and become a superpower. In the last few decades, the textile industry, like so much other manufacturing, has been devastated by foreign competition and global outsourcing. The remaining factories have survived because they have improved their technology to stay competitive or found niche markets that cater to a more select clientele.

For this project, I am trying to create a visually dynamic narrative that weaves together different places, machines, processes, and people. By photographing shuttered mills, older family-owned operations, and large modern factories, I can bridge the past with the present, and show how the textile industry, and American manufacturing in general, has been drastically altered by globalization.