What I was doing for those assignments wasn't always directly tied to what I was doing for myself, but it gave me the space to photograph. I started getting assignments that dealt with my own interests and made some pictures in that direction.

I realized how little I knew about my own country. I had grown up in the suburbs and, after college, I moved out of the country, so I didn't really know the place well. When I started following soldiers and their families back home, it provoked a lot of the questions about who we are as a nation, questions I realized couldn't be explored through the more limited framework of looking at the military at war and at home.

The travel ban that was imposed by the [Donald Trump] administration is a very direct reverberation of 9/11.

You find [reverberations from 9/11 ] in them most unexpected places, like graffiti on a wall. Sometimes it's a faded picture; sometimes it's a newspaper tacked to a wall. Sometimes it's weird paraphernalia related to it, home constructed paraphernalia. It resonates through society and continues to resonate today.

Nothing is over until there's something more decisive than your own thoughts.

Even though most people were disconnected from [travel ban], the moment amplified a fairly massive and somewhat irrational fear that exists in the populace at large.

[Buzzing at the Sill] deals with the margins of America, a lot of parts unseen. Well, parts that are seen and familiar to a lot of the populace, but unseen when it comes to the parameters of what mainstream news and popular culture and Hollywood reflects.