If you were to ask my mom, she’d tell you billboards are on their way to becoming obsolete. I mean for one thing, they’re eyesores. Whether or not she’s right, it got me thinking. How much of my thinking has been influenced by these rectangular ads in the sky?

For years, mom would drive me to soccer practice on fields tucked in between farmland. Billboards followed us to and from, selling, asking, and telling us things. They presented as harmless, yet some were less easy to ignore than others like the Hooters billboards informing me as a girl that this country sells female anatomy the way it sells chicken.

My hope is that by photographing billboards across the country, I’ll learn something about the subconscious of America: its sense of humor, its darkness, and its heart if such a thing can be found beneath a sales pitch.