Montana and New York

Heroic in both environment and inhabitant, Montana and New York City epitomize the American mythos. The scenery and stories of each place saturate our cultural identity, shaping who we are as individuals, informing us of our past, and guiding our path as a country into the future.



On the surface, the American legacy seems unified, symbolized in this book by familiar scenes and similar patterns reflected in each pair of photos—one from Montana and one from New York City. Each pair also shows drastically different yet powerful environments. The conflicts created by these differences illustrate some of the turbulent undercurrents to our story as Americans.



The purpose of these images is to compare and contrast the different perspectives, forms, and volumes of two of America’s most iconic places. By doing this we can move beyond the obvious and cliché to find surprising similarities and differences not only in these places but also in our personal views of our American cultural identity.