Canadians and Americans (best friends forever but... it's complicated)

After completing three bodies of work that were visual stories critiquing Canadian identity, I decided to add a fourth; to turn my focus southward to the United States of America, and to build a narrative that explored and exploited this wonderful, aggravating, generous and complex country. After several months of unsuccessful image making I realized I had to bring something of my own identity as a Canadian back into the work about Americans. The story needed to include a subversive Canadian element to act as a foil to the stereotypical American imperialist ego and sense of self-entitlement I was intending to critique. The underlying narrative in this work is to examine the unbalanced power dynamic that exist in relationships. Canadians and Americans (best friends forever...it's complicated) acknowledges that, like it or not, we have to behave as if we are "best friends forever". In order to make these photographs I had to work within the monolith that is American culture, and at the same time, stand apart from it, critically looking in from the outside.