I was in Italy with my former partner Malka Drucker in 1994 when news of the devastating elections of that year reached us. Newt Gingrich had managed to transform our United States Congress. We decided that night that we would travel the country, randomly interviewing and photographing people about politics. We were curious to know why people had voted this way, and concerned that the America we knew was changing. Did Americans no longer feel some responsibility for each other? Had the 60s been decidedly overturned?

A professor at Colorado College told us that politics is inherited — if your parents were Republicans the odds are you will be to. A banker in Jerome, Idaho said that government was messing with his right to fish and hunt, but he also told us of his love of the land, and the generous acts of kindness he performed all the time.  A waitress in Oregon decried the election but said neither political party was working for her so well. And a wrecker driver we met in Oregon after our car skidded off the Interstate onto a snow-covered median and did a flip, landing on its wheels, was one of our most amazing interviews. Riding with him in the truck as it pulled our car, he told us, “They just won’t give Clinton a chance.” He was completely liberal on all the issues, something we never would have thought when we met him. The next day we visited him and his wife at home, then later his lesbian sister in another state.  

We loved the people we met. No matter how they had voted they opened our hearts and drew us in. We drove quickly to Los Angeles to spend time with a friend dying of AIDS, and on the drive back to New Mexico interviewed Ann Day (Sandra Day O’Connor’s sister) in Arizona. Once in NM we stopped at a famous diner in Ramah where we met the woman owner/chef and her son, as well as a native couple who gave us a picture of life on the reservation saying, “The food stamps mentality has taken away individual pride and ambition.”

We tried to get a book contract, submitting a proposal with this seven-state sample but when we failed we gave up the project, never being sorry we had met these Americans on our journey. Now, in 2009, I wonder if I could do this same thing today in America’s heartland. Somehow I don’t think so.