Artist Todd Bradley is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘The State of America’. To see Todd’s body of work, click on any image.

Written in 2017

America is a country in a state of distress. Besides the constant threat of war from China, North Korea, and Russia, the US is still racially divided 53 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed. A significant cultural shift is happening in our nation, with women and men exposing sexual misconduct in the workforce. The Education system is flawed because students are taught solely how to fit into corporate America as cogs in the machine. Americans are not learning about their rights as citizens. Just as the President (Donald Trump at the time) and other key figures within the Republican Party dismiss facts as fake news and have herded the people of America into a dumbing down of our society. These things and others have caused our role as a superpower within the world to change.

Fifty-three years after the Civil rights act was passed, racial riots were happening in the streets of the United States of America. We have watched far too many dash-cam or body-cam videos of police officers using excessive force on dark-skinned individuals, ending in the worst possible outcome. The President labeled Hispanics as rapists and murderers. And anyone from the Middle East is assumed to be a terrorist. Unless your skin is ivory white, there will be restrictions to how far you can get ahead. In my photographic series titled The State of America, with a few exceptions, almost all the figures are white to show just how lopsided the system is.

Stemming from the #me_too movement, women and men have come forward to expose how prevalent sexual misconduct has been in the workplace. Since that, allegations of sexual misconduct have hit almost every industry, including 15 women who have accused the President of misconduct over 20 years. Millions of Women and supporters came to march on Washington and other cities worldwide to protest the sexual misconduct and treatment of women, LGBTQ, minorities, and other policies of the just sworn-in President, Donald Trump. Knit hats shaped like Pussycat ears were worn by demonstrators as part of the protest by the millions.

We as a society have had our basic logic turned upside down by the term “fake news.” If a story doesn’t fit the agenda of the subject, a quick denial and label of fake news are all that is necessary to stop the story from gaining traction in media outlets. Thus making society question its own level of knowledge. Big Pharmacy has put millions and millions of people on mind-altering medications. GMOs have taken over our food supply, and these toxins eat away at our bodies, requiring more medications furthering our spiral down the rabbit hole. Common Core academics do not teach the individual, it teaches group thinking and how to work as a group to accomplish the task. Individual thoughts and creativity are not encouraged. And in turn, kids are being prepped to be cogs in the machine of corporate America. Americans do not know their rights. Civics is no longer taught in most schools, and people are unaware of how the government works around them.

The United States of America is suffering at its core. For many, the state of our country is measured by how well we live out the American dream. But what is the American goal anymore? For many, it was a time when white males could prey on any young woman they pleased. Or was it a time when lunch counters were separated by your skin color? Was America great when we interned the Japanese Americans or when we separated migrant children from their mothers and placed them in cages? Was America great when space exploration was at the forefront of our growth? Or are we better off with a large segment of society believing the Earth is flat? Thomas Jefferson once said, “When people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Before the US can be the superpower it once was, we must come together to build up the core structure of our society to strive to treat each other better and learn about our government to overcome the deliberate oppression of the people.

Artist Statement

As an artist, I like to explore different mediums (digital and analog photography, oil paint, metal arts, digital pixel manipulation and collage) and styles to express my views. At its heart, my work focuses on decay, whether it is seed pods, structures, or our society and environment.

I believe the current state of photography is mirroring the early 1900’s when Kodak introduced the Brownie camera to the masses. Today, we have the cell phone. In both times, Cameras became common, and artists took notice and raised the bar in their photography.

As the Modernists once did, I want to push the medium in new ways. Using a traditional, mostly self-taught photography foundation, I digitally alter my photographs or use micro child-like dioramas to discuss social issues facing us.

Todd Bradley (1970, Detroit, USA) is a gay, color blind, photographer residing in San Diego, California. Todd’s work has shown in solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries worldwide, including The Louvre, Paris, Museum of Fine Art, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and The Griffin Museum of Photography, Boston. His portfolios have been published in print magazines around the world and his work has been used in a public art installation in Washington State. Todd is one of the founding members of the recognized Snow Creek Collaborative in San Diego. He often works with a macro lens shooting dioramas and floras, also shooting alternative portraiture, architecture, and uses digital manipulation and collage to tell his stories. Todd constructs small still life tableaus and miniature scale model dioramas that become his narrative. Todd’s aesthetic focuses on detailed features, color (even though he’s color-blind) to demonstrate new perspectives to ordinary objects in still time. Todd recently has brought analog medium and large format film photography back into his art.