I Documented The American West In 49 Photos Full Of Memory And Nostalgia

My name is Wangkai Wei, a photographer and artist originally from China, raised for a time in a Rust Belt town in Wisconsin, and now working between the US and China.

I’m submitting a film photography project called American Vacation: a series of images made across the American West, including highways, motels, amusement parks, churches, and roadside infrastructure. The work comes out of a specific kind of dislocation: as a child, I was sent to live with a white American family and attended a Catholic school where I was one of the only Chinese kids. When I later discovered the American West, it offered a different version of that same feeling: a vastness that doesn’t ask who you are. The series exists somewhere between road photography, psychological self-portrait, and outsider document.

So I invite you to scroll through, vote on your favorites, and feel a bit of nostalgia for these ‘lost spaces.’

More info: Instagram