Mother Jones - Hoops Hysteria, Indiana Style, 2012
The first photo story I had published. I grew up visiting grandparents in the small town of Batesville, Indiana and attended college at Indiana University in Bloomington where I was indoctrinated into the church of basketball. This felt like a natural starting point after falling under the spell of photography during a mid-life crisis type thing.
Once installed, a basketball hoop will remain standing almost indefinitely, commencing a slow entropy towards rust and abandonment. It might stand years or even generations before time and weather get the last word. Kids will grow up and fly the nest, but the backboard sticks around, a reminder of past camaraderie, solitary hours spent perfecting shooting form, or missed opportunities. Always beckoning…take a shot. The hoop is just there, and in the state of Indiana, the hoops are everywhere.
Indiana’s obsession with the sport goes back to the early 1900’s. Vestiges of legends half-forgotten and still in-the-making mark the landscape. With the 2012 Hoosiers ranked #1 in college basketball for the first time in twenty years, "Hoosier Hysteria" had returned. I wanted to photograph the footprint of basketball in places where it offered an escape from the confines of everyday life...a way out of boredom or a way out of town...a way to build bonds and rivalries...or simply a way to run out the clock when there's nothing better to do.
ps. Jay Bilas at ESPN retweeted the article 🥹. xoxo
Harper's Magazine: Notes on the State of Jefferson
It’s a slow day at Quigley’s General Store in Klamath River, California. The picked over mini-mart lies on a remote stretch of Highway 96 – a road located just 30 miles south of the Oregon state line, and a full day’s drive away from the palm trees and traffic jams of LA. Nearby, nestled between forests of evergreen pine and fir, a local town hall flies a green flag emblazoned with two crosses and a gold mining pan.
Quigley’s mini-mart is decorated with stickers of this same insignia, which represents the “Great Seal of State of Jefferson” – an imagined 51st state made up of deeply red rural counties in Northern California and Southern Oregon. Founded back in 1941, the ‘state’ was formed after less populated rural counties began to feel distanced from their more liberal state representatives. Now, 76 years later – roused by the rise of Trump and the UK’s Brexit result – a surge of new support could make this imagined state more of a reality.
“I don’t want to sound like a complete hick, but guns is a big [issue] for me… we don’t need gun control out here as much,” says Garrett Rider, a resident of Klamath River and an employee at the Quigley’s mini-mart. “I’m an anarchist at heart. I’m independent and believe everyone should take care of themselves. That’s pretty much how I think about The State of Jefferson.”
Down on the banks of the Klamath River, itinerant gold miner and bluegrass musician Jim Dwyer also has a few thoughts on the subject. He lives in an RV and pans for gold by hand. “I’m an Oregonian, and a Jeffersonian,” he says. “I’ve always lived on the state line. When I grew up in Klamath Falls you had to do more than one thing to make a living. You couldn’t just be a logger or miner or mill worker… you had do a little gold panning, and get $25 or $30 on a Saturday. When a mill would close and people got laid off, a few of us would jump in a pickup and go out in the woods, hunt mushrooms, and get gold. That’s what the State of Jefferson is about.”
Just miles from the Syria border, the Golan Heights have been controlled by Israel since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. Israeli kibbutzes have been trying their hand at cattle ranching for decades on the fertile volcanic tableland, which is dotted with land mines, tank carcasses, and military bases. Shay Zerbib, 55, is a veteran of ranches in New Mexico and west Texas where he learned valuable lessons about raising free-range cattle, and is one of the more experienced cowboys at the kibbutz. "I carry a gun because you never know what will happen out here. We have wolves and wild hogs and also cattle thieves. I imagine they would think twice before they come to steal but nothing is for sure." he says.
After some time in Srinigar, the brothers introduced me to a local mountain guide named Mushtaq who agreed to take me backpacking near Mount Harmukh, a peak where Hindus believe a hermit once encountered Shiva, god of destruction. We stayed with a family in Naranag village on the banks of the Wangath river and the next morning stopped at a market where Mushtaq bought a live chicken, which clucked the whole way up the mountain until we reached camp that evening and he prepared it for dinner. We shared the trail with nomadic Gujjar and Bakerwal families migrating to escape the summer heat and tend to their livestock, and passed by a few Indian military patrols looking for separatist militants in the area. It was a pastoral respite from the overwhelming stimulus of the cities, and looking back a rare window of relative peacefulness in a region beset with territorial tensions.
In the run up to the 2016 Democratic primaries, I traveled around the state of Vermont to try to get at the essence of Bernie Sanders by uncovering people and places that had been a part of his 40 year history in the state. I met with a range of folks in his orbit: old friends, former neighbors, political allies, local police, hunters, and dairy farmers - as you might guess, strong opinions abounded.