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The American landscape has been shaped by systems of exclusion as much as by geography, settlement, and development. Land ownership, housing access, municipal boundaries, public infrastructure, electoral representation, and private investment have all been influenced by policies and practices that distributed opportunity unevenly across race, class, and place.
In LONG SUN DOWN, Kris Graves documents locations connected to multiple forms of structural discrimination, including gerrymandering, redlining, sundown towns, gentrification, financial exclusion, incarceration, highway construction, and uneven public investment. Situated across the Southeast and Midwest, including sites in Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, the project examines the American urban landscape and the structural conditions that are not always immediately visible, but become apparent under closer scrutiny.
The work considers how historical exclusion continues to shape contemporary geography, from Alabama’s 7th District, to redistricting patterns linking New Orleans to Baton Rouge in Louisiana, to district fragmentation or “cracking” in suburban Atlanta. Graves discusses Janesville, Wisconsin as an example of sundown-town history, and Milwaukee’s 53206 zip code in relation to prison gerrymandering, a place defined by its status as the most incarcerated zip code in America where “thousands are physically present but politically erased.”
LONG SUN DOWN presents these sites within a broader study of land, race, policy, and representation in the United States. The project does not treat discrimination as a historical construct or an isolated regional condition but approaches the built environment as a record of overlapping systems: where residence is permitted or restricted, where capital is withheld, where political boundaries are drawn, where infrastructure is imposed, and where communities are excluded from representation.
About Kris Graves
Kris Graves is an artist and publisher based in New York and California. Graves creates artwork that deals with societal problems and aims to use art as a means to inform people about cultural issues. Using a mix of conceptual and documentary practices, Graves photographs the subtleties of societal power and its impact on the built environment. He explores how capitalism and power have shaped countries -- and how that can be seen and experienced in everyday life. Graves also works to elevate the representation of people of color in the fine art canon; and to create opportunities for conversation about race, representation, and urban life. He photographs to preserve memory.
Graves received his BFA in Visual Arts from S.U.N.Y. Purchase College and has been published and exhibited globally, including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Getty Institute, Los Angeles; and National Portrait Gallery in London, England; among others. Permanent collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty Institute, Schomburg Center, Whitney Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Brooklyn Museum; and The Wedge Collection, Toronto; amongst others.
Graves also sits on the board of Blue Sky Gallery: Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, Portland; and The Architectural League of New York as Vice President of Photography.
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