American Pictures

In 1993, Jeff Dunas set out on the first of many trips crisscrossing the country to photograph scenes representative of small-town America in the 1950s, revisiting the country of his youth after spending the previous two decades in Paris. The stunning result is the American Pictures series documenting the architecture, landscape, and people simply living their American dream.

"Visually speaking," Dunas observes, "the texture of this country has evolved from wood-and-brick buildings to glass structures that don't open. Air-conditioning runs in place of fresh air, which in itself is sometimes difficult to find. I wanted to take an archive of work from the last century into this century while I still could."