JESSE RIESER | American Hypnosis, 2023

This is the transmission of a citizen who seems comfortable sitting with the knowledge that he is as intrigued by his home as he is alarmed by it. These photographs are as much about the American roadside as they are about the infinitely flat and delusional digital landscape, a place where reverence is arbitrarily distributed between the meaningful and meaningless components of our world, both existing and extinct. If Christmas in America is a thematic and visual exercise in American Maximalism, these images are deceptively nuanced photographs of—and for—an America that has done everything it can to abolish nuance, creating bleached-out stand-ins for the place itself.  It’s hard to ignore the current collective fear of losing one’s version of America—one's way of life—and the fear that it, too, is fleeting. It’s as if the concept of America is unshareable. Here, you will find surreal postcards from a fever dream—a feeling of familiar uneasiness, as if something is missing or has been plucked out of the frame. Erased.

As this project nears completion, I have realized these works are less of a social commentary on those navigating their fears and ultimately a projection of my own. 

Fear of aging and the chapter of my youth fully closed as the passage of time accelerates. 

Fear of new technology and my own obsolescence. 

Fear of our distressed natural world. 

Fear of continual instability, both financially and politically. 

Fear of losing the life I have built, constantly recalculating expectations and promises. 

Maybe it is my America that is vanishing.

BIO

Jesse was born in the Ozarks--an 80’s kid with a Midwestern upbringing in Springfield, Missouri. At Arizona State University he majored in photography and art history while attending the Herberger Institute of Art and Design. Now working out of Phoenix and Los Angles, he continues his exploration of uniquely American themes paired with his unique use of light and color. Jesse has been interviewed and featured in The New York Times, Time, National Geographic, Architectural Digest, NPR, Buzzfeed, Wired, Fast Company, and the Washington Post. His work has been celebrated by Photolucida’s Critical Mass Top 50 in 2011, 2013, and 2018, Communication Arts Photography Annual (2x), PDN Photo Annual (6x), American Photography Annual (17x) and a recipient of the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward award (Top Emerging Fine Art Photographer in North America and U.K. Under 35) With over 40 exhibitions, selected solo shows at the Mountain Shadows Gallery, (Arizona) Mabee Gerrer Museum of Art (Oklahoma) Smithsonian affiliated Irvine Center for the Arts (Texas), and Newspace Center for Photography (Oregon). He has been commissioned by Apple, Adidas, Adobe, AT&T, Amtrak, Coca-Cola, Disney, The Ford Motor Company, NBA, NFL, United Airlines, Warner Brothers, Wieden+Kennedy, and Visa. He regularly contributes to The New York Times, Time, Wired, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal and ESPN. As a past winner, he has twice been a judge and panelist for The One Club Young Guns program- identifying the top 30 creatives under 30 working around the world.