Anonymous America is a series of photographs taken in various urban and rural locations around the country. It is an informal body of work that I’ve been building for over ten years. I started taking this type of photograph when I moved to Savannah in 2001. Like many, the great change in my life inspired me to photograph my surroundings. At the time, the intrinsic concept of anonymity was prevalent in my mind every hour of the day. Therefore, I wanted to visually represent what it felt like to live like as a visitor in my place of residence.

Moving to Savannah from Chicago to attend graduate school to earn an MFA in painting was the great change in my life. At the time, this decision was met with some controversy within my circle of family and friends. Their reactions ran the gamut. I received words of respect and envy for taking the risk to pursue a more-satisfying direction. I received conversations of concern that I was throwing away the career I had to pursue a careless and precarious direction. It was a strange time in my life filled with contradiction. I was thrilled and excited yet constantly filled with self-doubt and anxiety.

Ultimately this series of photographs, called Anonymous America has evolved out of my state of change and contradiction of that period in my life. Change and contradiction are continuous in our lives no matter how hard we resist.

Anonymous America represents how individual distinction can exist within the ordinary, average, normal, run-of-the-mill, standard, typical, middle-of-the-road, conventional, unremarkable, unexceptional, workaday, undistinguished, nonspecific, commonplace, unmemorable, pedestrian, uneventful and bland.

Click on the link above or Anonymous in the category menu to view the photographs. All photographs are © Brett Callero.