Paul Edmondson's State of Main is a tribute to rural America - to the towns, street corners, buildings and farms. Driving thousands of miles across small county roads, Edmondson has created a compelling body of work that captures the proud resilience of these often overlooked communities. It also highlights the ironies and tragedies of small town America.
‘For most of my adult life I've lived in large cities; I've enjoyed the privileges and conveniences of urban living, of reliable services and all that comes with it. My interest in small towns grew during early road trips through rural America, and where most of these conveniences are almost entirely absent.
State of Main is a metaphor for the American dream; for opportunity, independence and patriotism. But it's also a study of hard times, abandoned homes and shuttered stores. It's these dualities that interest me the most, and how in the end, it’s nature that almost always seems to win.’
Paul Edmondson is an award-winning photographer known for his minimalist landscapes of the American West, often in the places where humans and the natural environment intersect. Born in 1967, he was raised in Washington DC and studied anthropology at Northern Arizona University. His fine art photography is held in corporate and private collections worldwide. Edmondson resides with his family in Seattle, Washington.
For the last 25 years I’ve been taking extensive road trips across the American west, searching for desolate locations for my landscape photography work. Most often on these trips I try to avoid driving on major highways and instead choose the smaller, county roads that criss-cross the country. As a result of this slower, off-the-beaten-path approach to road travel, I started to become curious about the towns, street corners, buildings and farms that occupy so much of rural America.
After Trump won in 2016, it felt like many of the communities I was passing through started expressing the MAGA ethos in ways that I never could truly understand or grasp. And the visuals relating to American patriotism suddenly seemed politically charged and deeply partisan. But there was also the timeless and sometimes quirky small-town iconography that often caught my eye. I wanted to see if there was a way to combine these different elements into a cohesive body of work that expressed my own interpretation of todays small-town America. I was also deeply inspired by Walker Evans, Stephen Shore and many others.
When I started the series in late 2020, the working title was simply ‘Main Street’, but as the project neared completion I asked my gallerist Jenn Singer what else she thought might work - was there a more effective way of describing what the images conveyed? We agreed on ‘State of Main’, which I think more accurately describes the work. In many ways the series is an expression of the American dream - for opportunity, independence and patriotism. But it’s also a study of hard times, abandoned homes and shuttered stores. It’s these dualities that interest me the most, and how in the end, it’s nature that almost always seems to win.
