Buzzing at the Sill is from a Theodore Roethke poem called "In a Dark Time." I'd heard a small part of it in a play, a sort of sci-fi play about morality in a virtual reality universe. Nothing to do with the book precisely, but it was a great play.

Sometimes the picture is more interesting than what is going on. Sometimes the picture is suggestive of greater things in society or the history of what might be connected to the theme in the pictures and those are worth exploring.

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

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.

[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.

I'm a constant editor. Every few months or so I make a ton of 4x6 prints. I put them on a magnetic board and I live with them for a while to see what bubbles to the surface. A lot of this was part of Disco Night originally, and I suddenly started realizing, "If I keep working on this because I'm not done and I put all that in Disco Night, how can this be one book? Is it going to be too long and bloated and crazy?".

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.