YOU ARE HERE | LUCEO 

Every traveler who has approached a map and seen the bold demarcation "you are here" shares in that comforting experience of belonging. It is a simple reassuring orientation. The documentary photographer holds a similar aim: to know the life and humanity they belong to, and, in turn, that to which we all belong.

To be an American is to belong to a diverse community made up of many regions with just as many cultural variations. This country is simultaneously traditional and rebellious, weathered and radiant, selfish and giving; navigating these roads, through region and temperament to find one's place, is as old as the country itself.

Photographers have often participated in this great tradition – setting out to record what it means to be American and finding out what binds this greater community together. Few have done it truly as a community, both as a collective of photographers and from a joined perspective. The works here, from the project Few and Far Between, does just that and are only attributed to the collective name of LUCEO and not that of the individual photographer. This reflects that unity and community are more important than the individual. The photographers are certainly skilled individuals who are grounded in the basics of their craft, yet they are not afraid to stretch boundaries as image-makers. This communal project indicates the strength and satisfaction they feel photographing this diverse country as a group. 

Roads connect one town to the next - one community to the other - and, though there are differences, each community shares the affirming distinctive of hope and satisfaction that life is found in the process of coming together. If life’s primal fear is separation, photography’s great joy is connection: connections between subjects, subjects, and photographer, and the photograph and you.