I began to explore America in more general terms. I really started this work in 2009. I got the bulk of it done as I was easing out of Disco Night.

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

I kept shooting but started making drafts of the work, essentially spending a few days a month sequencing and editing, hanging things up on the board, showing them to trusted confidantes from in and outside the photo world. It started to take its shape naturally over time until I kind of ran out of ideas.

I am still covering conflict to some degree. I was back in Iraq. I've covered quite a bit of the Israel and Palestine. But I'm not doing it with the kind of intensity I was before and I'm not seeking out the front line and the kind danger that comes with being at the edge of the war the way I used to.

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.

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.

I think a lot of the work I've done and a lot of the work I'm going to do in the future still ties to 9/11 and the fallout from it.