ENTRY DESCRIPTION
This portrait is of my twin brother, photographed in the small post-industrial town where we grew up. Once a thriving timber community, the industry collapsed in the 1970s, but the people remained—enduring decades of poverty, crime, and economic abandonment.
I wanted to depict him with honesty and dignity, standing in the places that shaped us both. His “Party Animal” shirt becomes an unintentional contrast to the quiet resilience he carries, a kind of worn humor that often appears in communities that have had to survive more than they celebrate.
The photograph is an acknowledgment of those who stay—who hold on, rebuild, or simply persist in America’s overlooked towns. It is both personal and emblematic, a portrait of a brother and of the human endurance found in places long left behind.

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