The waiting room of the Midwest

There’s a stretch of land in western Minnesota flat, functional, industrial. Grain silos tower over two-lane roads, rusted fences hug abandoned baseball fields, and small-town parks sit in a kind of eerie stillness, as if paused decades ago. It’s not decay but suspension. Like a chrysalis that never opens. Were these towns ever flourishing? Did the people ever experience joy there or simply a desperate survival amidst small wins and loved ones.

I’ve driven through these towns for years, always causing me discomfort. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling at first. But the emotion eventually surfaced: stuckness. A low, quiet ache. Not sadness or pity, but a spiritual unease. As if the land itself is caught between purpose and abandonment, between identity and irrelevance. A kind of purgatory not dead, but not fully alive either. 

And then I realized this is the emotional landscape of potential unfulfilled. Of people I know. Of parts of myself I’ve outgrown. Talented, intelligent people I’ve known who can never get out of their own way to truly flourish in this life. The feeling of myself at 18 years old with a hopelessness and confusion of not knowing what to do with my life nor recognizing the potential that lay within. This town represents the town in myself that I abandoned decades ago. 

Stuckness isn’t laziness. It’s tension without release. It’s not a lack of beauty or ability, it's a fear of the next stage. It’s wings that grow but never unfold.

Maybe that’s why these places unsettle me more than ruins. At least ruins have surrendered to the elements. But stuckness…stuckness pretends tomorrow is coming. It paints fresh lines on empty ballfields no one will run. It slowly decays in front of your eyes but not fast enough to bring relief, just enough to give you a sliver of hope to keep you locked in a waiting room. Similar to my experience as a teacher at a dying Catholic school. A school slowly losing students, a 100-year-old building, decaying in front of our eyes. Tradition as the enemy against acceptance of a dying school. Not bad enough to let it go, dying but we’re told never to give up. Stuck, trapped in duty. 

So, I’m photographing them to completely feel this discomfort. A feeling I despise. Maybe it’s evolutionary, like the feeling of being trapped or cornered. Maybe it’s knowing my life could’ve easily been as stagnant as these towns. Perhaps it's knowing my parents lived their life in this stagnation. Many people’s inner worlds are trapped in these industrial waste lands.

Luckily, I built my own city that resides in an invincible summer!