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Live Free or Die: The American Dream

Like millions before him, my grandfather came to the United States in pursuit of the American Dream. He believed wholeheartedly that it was the land of opportunity. For him, it was a country where he could go and fight for what ever he wanted. His American Dream was to return to Europe with the force of the US Navy, fight The Third Reich and buy land in Texas where he could die a true American. He fulfilled his American Dream and is buried in a military cemetery in El Paso, Texas.

For over a century the American Dream has been based on tangibles with defined markers of success and confined with in the boarders of the US. However, I believe, that dream has morphed into something less defined by what you have and more so by how you are able to live your life: free and unapologetic. A global perspective that shares the vigor of the American Dream but was born out of a unified effort to reshape this world. No longer are people striving for the single-family home with a white picket fence and the perfect family but to thrive in an era where we can embody exactly who we are or were meant to be. A world where we celebrate the differences between us and are free to love, build and identify as we see fit.

In this post pandemic world we all find ourselves in where the vail of finical security, adulthood and arbitrary processes has been lifted. We have been given the unique opportunity of choice.

From the highest peak of the Andes, to a laundry mat on the sunset strip, over the Atlantic Ocean in a dungeon in Florence and everywhere in between this photo series concentrates on the new normal. It documents individuals who’s very being embodies an unapologetic sense of self incapable of fitting societal norms as we know them. A defiance rooted in a hatred for a world that tells us how we should be and what we should dream of: their only options are to be or die.

In the spirit and words of the great Malcolm X, “I believe that there will be ultimately a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don’t think it will be based on the color of the skin…”