{"id":248290,"date":"2026-07-14T07:30:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T11:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=248290"},"modified":"2026-07-13T11:32:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T15:32:43","slug":"we-the-people-holds-mirror-to-those-comprising-the-us-upon-250th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2026\/07\/we-the-people-holds-mirror-to-those-comprising-the-us-upon-250th\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We the People\u2019 Holds a Mirror to the US at 250"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Steven G. Smith<\/a> says his projects rarely produce favorite photographs – but favorite people, he has lots of those.<\/p>\r\n

Add to the list the Amish farmer who Smith encountered last month while driving through rural Pennsylvania. The man was walking his horse on a lead, the light just perfect from the setting sun, when Smith drove by and to himself questioned whether to stop or keep driving. The man would never allow a photo, Smith thought.<\/p>\r\n

“I drove a half mile past and hit the brakes, put it in reverse, got out with my camera, and asked him, ‘Can I take a picture of you walking your horse,'” Smith recounts. “He goes, ‘Oh yeah. You betcha.’ And we just continued with a really wonderful conversation about how he was training his horse to be on the road.”<\/p>\r\n

Pulling a buggy as cars whizz by is a lot for a horse to manage, the man told Smith, explaining the animal must be a mature enough for such training because there’s no room for mistake with a family-filled buggy in tow. This horse was 4 years old when it first hit the road.<\/p>\r\n

“He was fascinating,” Smith says of the man, adding about the almost-missed and second-guessed encounter, “The sad part about stereotypes is we so quickly write people off, and we miss out on these opportunities to learn from them and to enrich our lives. People want to tell their story.”<\/p>\r\n

\"two\r\n
Drum and Bugle Corps, Gebo Cemetery, Fromberg, Montana (Steven G. Smith)<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n
\"A\r\n
Training the Buggy Horse Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (Steven G. Smith)<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n
\"People\r\n
Naturalization Ceremony Boston, Massachusetts (Steven G. Smith)<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n
\"British\r\n
The British Are Resting Lexington, Massachusetts (Steven G. Smith)<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n

As Smith, a visual communication professor in UConn’s Department of Journalism<\/a>, traveled around the country the last three years for his photographic essay “We the People: America in the 21st<\/sup> Century,”<\/a> people like that Pennsylvania farmer opened up to him to share about their lives in the communities they call home.<\/p>\r\n

Meeting them without judgment, from a journalist’s perspective, as a witness to whatever they were doing at the time, allowed Smith to create a portrait of the country, one that on the 250th<\/sup> anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence allows viewers to see what The Land of the Free really looks like now, he says.<\/p>\r\n

‘Humanity is still beautiful’<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

“This is a time to be reflective, especially with all of the tension that exists,” Smith says. “I’m trying to see the humanity side of the tension and step back from the tension to see it objectively.”<\/p>\r\n

After finishing his last project, “The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Journey,”<\/a> about a daughter caring for her father with Alzheimer’s disease, Smith says he needed a different assignment, one that would be “a mile wide and an inch deep,” casting a wider net of subjects and research rather than focusing so narrowly on one thing.<\/p>\r\n

While he started work on “We the People” before being named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow in 2025<\/a>, Smith took his fellowship year to concentrate on it, researching where in the country to go, what to do, and how to represent the vastness and variety of its people.<\/p>\r\n

\"A\r\n
Hot Air Balloons at Dusk Bluff, Utah\u202f(Steven G. Smith)<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n
\"A\r\n
Dressed for the Lunar New Year Alhambra, California\u202f(Steven G. Smith)<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n
\"A\r\n
Rodeo Day Chama, New Mexico (Steven G. Smith)<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n
\"Six\r\n
Before the Second Line 7th Ward, New Orleans, Louisiana (Steven G. Smith)<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n

“We want to stereotype outside of our silos and outside of our tribes,” he says. “We miss out a lot on so much conversationally and so much enrichment when we close the door.”<\/p>\r\n

Four words sum up Smith’s biggest takeaway from those he encountered on visits to a Burning Man-style concert in the eastern Oregon desert, the Belmont Stakes in Saratoga Springs, New York, and everywhere in between: “Humanity is still beautiful.”<\/p>\r\n

Much of his work will be part of a coffee table-style book set for publication in the next six months. But a larger number of photographs are part of an ongoing immersive exhibition at the Capitol Park Museum in Baton Rouge, Louisiana<\/a>, that’s projecting 200 of Smith’s images onto two large screens, nearly placing the audience inside each locale, almost shoulder-to-shoulder with the person in the photograph.<\/p>\r\n

“I like the idea of thinking of the term ‘a more perfect union,’ that kind of sticks in my mind. ‘These United States, a more perfect union,'” he says referencing the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. “When you think about it, we’re still in pursuit of that more perfect union. We really are. That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re pursuing the more perfect union. We haven’t mastered it yet, and that’s part of what I want to show. What does it look like and what do we look like?”<\/p>\r\n

For Smith, that looks like Florence Owens Thompson, or “The Migrant Mother,”<\/a> frozen in time by photographer Dorothea Lange during the Great Depression as a representation of those very hard days. He thinks of photojournalist Arthur Rothstein’s<\/a> pictures of the Dust Bowl from around that time, too.<\/p>\r\n

In the 1940s and ’50s, Swiss American photographer Robert Frank traveled the United States seeking to look at it critically, Smith says, to show its underbelly.<\/p>\r\n

“I don’t have that agenda,” he says of “We the People.” “But mine is not agenda-less. It is to show humanity and to hopefully make you consider humanity.”<\/p>\r\n

Find more of Smith’s work on Instagram at @stevengsmith_pictures. <\/em><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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