The 100 Day Project #21

Invisible City - Split Screen Streets

Tucson, Arizona, USA, 2008

The 100 Day Project, Day 21

I made this photograph during The Invisible City, a project about reclaiming public space in downtown Tucson. But looking at it today, in this moment, it feels like it was made for right now.

The frame is divided almost perfectly down the middle. On the left, a figure in military fatigues moving under cold green light. On the right, an American flag draped over a figure standing in darkness, a blade in hand. A wall between them. Two realities occupying the same space without ever touching.

I didn't manufacture that division. I found it in the street.

I have been thinking a lot about division lately — about what it means to live in a country that feels permanently split down the middle. I covered the attacks on 9/11 for The New York Times. I watched the flag's meaning shift in the years that followed, from unity to something more complicated and contested. And now, watching us move toward war again, I find myself returning to this image and asking the same questions I was asking when I made it fifteen years ago.

What does public space mean when it is saturated with symbols of militarism and nationalism? Who does it belong to? Who feels safe in it?

I am hungry for something different. Not naive about the complexity of the world — I have seen enough of it to know better — but genuinely, persistently hungry for a life that is peaceful and equitable. For a country that chooses that too.

This photograph, Split Screen Streets, holds that hunger for me. The wall in the middle of the frame holds everything we have yet to figure out how to cross.

About the 100 Day Project: A global creative challenge where thousands of artists share a piece of their practice every single day for 100 days. I'm joining creatives around the world, and I'm excited to bring you along. Each day I'll be sharing one of my photos — some recent, some old, and some from my current project — along with the story behind it: where I was, who I was with, and why I love it.