Detroit, Michigan | Mentor: Wendy Red Star
Sam Gulliver is a photographer based in Detroit, Michigan. While he is geographically rooted in an metropolitan setting, his work often delves into the culture and experiences of rural peoples.
As a product of the Rust Belt himself, Gulliver seeks to challenge the stereotypical, faceless image of the Midwest, offering a fresh and distinctive perspective on this often-overlooked region of the United States.
Project Statement
This project is about the personal and cultural tensions I associate with the Midwest—the place I call home. Rather than treating the region as empty or forgotten, I see it as a setting rich with stories that speak to a broader sense of unease in American life.
Inspired by Gothic imagery and themes, the work touches on ideas like hauntings, ruins, and historical trauma, as well as what theorist Mark Fisher called “the slow cancellation of the future”—the creeping sense that time has stalled—the future never arrived, leaving us to continuously relive the past. The Midwest, in this sense, becomes a kind of stand-in for a larger cultural disorientation.
At its heart, this project is also about reckoning with what it means to be from the Midwest—how the region’s history informs identity, and how its contradictions shape daily life. It’s a personal attempt to look closely at the myths I grew up with and the realities that exist alongside them.
The resulting images move between the surreal and the everyday, blending fact and fiction, past and present. The work carries an eerie tone, but it’s grounded in a genuine effort to understand a place that feels both familiar and strange.
2025 Junior Fellows: Walker Bankson | Sam Gulliver | Rosemary Haynes | Jasmine Huang | Jess Rhodes | Lawren Simmons