Dorf USA
Dorf USA is a photo diary reflecting on American identity through the eyes of a perpetual outsider.
As a first-generation Japanese immigrant raised in the United States, I often experienced America not as a home, but as a cultural experiment—one I participated in willingly, yet never fully understood. I longed to embody Americanness, but instead, I observed it from the margins, my sense of belonging marked by distance and a deepening sense of voyeurism.
During the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, my partner and I set out on a four-month road trip across the country in a 1978 Ford Econoline. I believed that spending time with multigenerational Americans would bring me closer to understanding what it means to be American. It didn’t. If anything, the experience raised more questions than answers.
What makes America “exceptional,” as it so often claims to be? I searched for answers in conversations with gas station clerks, in the shifting skies above the I-287, and in the fading light over the Salton Sea. I retraced the words of the people I met—stories of love and addiction, lost fingers and dead brothers—told with the ease of those who were no longer victims of their own narratives.
America, I came to see, is a country of storytellers. In this country, tragedy becomes poetry, water becomes whiskey, and wounded veterans build castles three stories into the sky. Through portraits and landscapes, this photo diary attempts to document the ways some Americans—like the terrain they inhabit—reimagine themselves in the face of change.
