Land Of

INTRODUCTION

Land Of is a long-term documentary project by Michele I. Arazi, developed over four years through repeated stays with people living in remote parts of the United States.

“I wasn’t born American. America was a place bigger than anything I had known before. I had to make it less foreign.”

Rather than approaching the country through political identities or predetermined social categories, Arazi chose to begin with proximity. He travelled to rural counties far from major urban centres, staying with people in their homes and accompanying them through the rhythms of everyday life. There were no formal interviews or attempts to construct representative portraits. Instead, the project developed through time spent together, conversations, shared routines, and sustained observation.

Working with photography, sound recordings, and short video fragments, Arazi gathered traces of these encounters as they unfolded. Houses, landscapes, gestures, voices, objects, and moments of waiting gradually form a portrait that resists a single narrative. The people he meets are not presented as symbols of political positions or social types. They remain individuals whose lives contain contradictions, attachments, uncertainties, and ways of belonging that cannot easily be reduced to familiar divisions.

At a moment when the United States is often described through increasingly fixed ideological oppositions, Land Of turns towards the ordinary spaces that exist beyond these categories. The project does not seek to resolve those divisions or offer an explanation of the country. Instead, it asks what can be understood through staying, listening, and looking closely at lives as they are lived.

Across four years of encounters, America becomes less a singular idea than a constellation of places and people. Distance gives way to familiarity, while familiarity continues to hold uncertainty. What emerges is a quiet and incomplete portrait shaped through proximity, time, and shared presence.

ABOUT ARTIST

Michele I. Arazi (b. 1969) is a photographer and filmmaker based in New York City. Working across photography, moving image, and long-form documentary practice, his work is informed by an interdisciplinary background spanning visual arts, film, computer science, and the philosophy of art.

Arazi’s practice is grounded in sustained observation and close engagement with people and place. Rather than approaching his subjects through predetermined narratives, he works through time, proximity, and lived encounter, allowing images, conversations, sounds, and everyday gestures to accumulate into open-ended forms of storytelling. His work often moves between documentary observation and a more personal mode of inquiry, examining how individuals understand place, belonging, and the social environments they inhabit.

SPECIFICATIONS

Photographs and text: Michele I. Arazi

Field Production: Gina Bevilacqua

Art Direction: Zhen SHI

Design: Ma Shirui @typo_d

ISBN: 978-2-9585094-7-7

Publication date: October 2026