In Photos: a migrant’s perspective on the USA

In 2020, the pan­dem­ic was near its peak and much of the world was stuck indoors. Greek-Swedish-Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­ph­er Flo­rence Mont­mare was think­ing about the world beyond. While she was work­ing in New York as a cul­tur­al attaché for Swe­den and engag­ing in diplo­mat­ic work, she gained an acute aware­ness of the cli­mate crisis’s sever­i­ty and began to think of ways she could explore while min­imis­ing her car­bon emit­ting impact. ​“We were all iso­lat­ed and stay­ing small,” Mont­mare recalls. ​“I real­ly want­ed to burst out of that bub­ble, so I picked up the camera.”

In autumn 2021 she set out across the USA, in a coast-to-coast odyssey across its high­ways in clas­sic style. Instead of hit­ting the open roads in a gas guz­zling mus­cle motor, she used a Ford elec­tric car, pulling into wher­ev­er she could to recharge, recoup, and make pic­tures. From Walk­er Evans in the 1930s to Robert Frank, Stephen Shore, Thomas Hoep­ker, and Jacob Holdt in the decades fol­low­ing – sev­er­al icon­ic pho­tog­ra­phers from decades past have under­tak­en such marathon dri­ves, cross­ing the con­ti­nent and cre­at­ing pho­to­graph­ic sur­veys of the USA that they found.

Yet as those names sug­gest, the char­ac­ter of the rov­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er has tra­di­tion­al­ly been dom­i­nat­ed by white Amer­i­can men. As a woman and a migrant, Montmare’s 2023 jour­ney took the tra­di­tion­al for­mat and flipped its lens. ​“I real­ly want­ed to have an alter­na­tive view of Amer­i­ca,” she explains. ​“Every­thing has always been told by white men, so as an immi­grant with many dif­fer­ent back­grounds and cul­tures, I want­ed to see what my view would be like. Of course, we’ve been so influ­enced by their images but [I want­ed to see] what the view would be today and what would be an updat­ed ver­sion of that road trip.”

The jour­ney she took, and the pic­tures she made across the rough­ly half a year spent away from home is now doc­u­ment­ed in her new pho­to­book Amer­i­ca Series. From clas­sic Amer­i­cana hotspots such as Las Vegas or Austin, Texas to Native Amer­i­can reser­va­tions rarely vis­it­ed by out­siders, and even far-flung cor­ners of the country’s deserts – the black-and white pic­tures exam­ine the diver­si­ty of life, peo­ple, and cul­ture in the USA.

In a coun­try that on sur­face lev­el can seem more divid­ed than ever – 77% of Amer­i­cans said that they believed the coun­try was more divid­ed now than before the pan­dem­ic out­break – Mont­mare found com­mon­al­i­ty when she spoke to peo­ple. Part of that was expressed in the pho­tographs, with each of her sit­ters stand­ing in front of the same white can­vas back­ground that she trav­elled with. ​“There’s a lot of aggres­sion in the polit­i­cal realm, but when it comes to peo­ple and you just meet them and have them see you and look at you and meet you,” she says. ​“All the masks fell off, and it felt like ​‘wow, we’re just the same’ – you can scale away all those sig­ni­fiers of cul­ture, age and gen­der and socioe­co­nom­ic stuff, but in the end we all want the same things.

“Peo­ple want­ed safe­ty – basic things, like being in a place where you can afford health­care,” she con­tin­ues. ​“But also love and friend­ships and con­nec­tion. With­in a cou­ple of min­utes [of me meet­ing them] peo­ple start­ed cry­ing when I lift­ed the cam­era – there was a sense of ​‘now I’m being seen’, or ​‘I’m actu­al­ly allow­ing you in to see me’.”

On top of the peo­ple she met and made por­traits of, there’s a heavy focus on the beau­ti­ful, rugged land­scape of the USA, and the wildlife with­in it. As the cli­mate cri­sis wors­ens and dis­rupts the earth around us, Amer­i­ca Series reminds us of its grandiose pres­ence. Often pic­tures of the peo­ple and land are placed side-by-side, while inter­views Mont­mare con­duct­ed sees Amer­i­cans inter­ro­gate the rela­tion­ships they have with the coun­try and land around them.

“I real­ly want­ed to get across this con­trast between those por­traits and these peo­ple pho­tographed in the same way – stand­ing and dream­ing in front of that white can­vas back­ground,” she says. ​“And then [land­scapes] in con­trast with the sim­plic­i­ty. Because these land­scapes are kind of doom, there’s a sense of dra­ma or some­thing is about to hap­pen – this is real­ly about the cli­mate with­out us.

“It’s my pil­grim­age, across a con­ti­nent that I have called home for a very, very long time,” she con­tin­ues. ​“And it’s a med­i­ta­tion on the peo­ple and land­scapes of America.”

Amer­i­ca Series by Flo­rence Mont­mare is pub­lished by Dami­ani

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