“Culture is not static - it’s carried, exchanged, shaped, and shared. Migration not only reshapes those who move, but also the communities that receive them. As years unfold these encounters are woven into the fabric of collective life, producing an amalgam of identity and shared history that challenges the simple distinctions between “here” and “there” as well as “us” and “them.”

Photographer Patricia Houghton Clarke’s latest project, An American Girl is a deep dive into the intricacies of North American identity and family and how that has long defined American culture. The narrative of An American Girl is grounded in the everyday and sees Clarke turning both her camera and empathy to everyday life: domestic spaces, landscapes, gestures, objects, architecture, and the quiet rituals through which culture is both remembered and remade.

“The stories in An American Girl originate from my extended family in the Northwest U.S. and are interconnected by blood and marriage,” Clarke explains. “Over generations, these connections created my beloved grandchild, Edie Rei, the subject of An American Girl. This American Girl's heritage also includes a great-grandmother whose bloodline reaches back to the Mohawk and Pequot tribes and who in the 1850s co-founded an Indian School with her husband, a US Government Indian Agent. In a new twist of the family's evolution, it now includes a mixed race Black, Native American, and white European half-sister and stepmother, and a Chinese-American stepfather.”

As Clarke alludes, the generations and stories the work embraces have borne witness to history in the making. From Irish-Catholic potato famine refugees and pre-Colonial English immigrants (including a signer of the Declaration of Independence) to Welsh and Scottish settlers, Eastern European Jewish immigrants, and descendants of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II, the series explores how migration and cultural blending have shaped the American experience.

Ultimately, this work is a meditation on belonging. It examines how much of where we come from remains with us, what we inherit from those who came before, and what new cultures we create together. In documenting these intersections, Clarke’s photographs affirm migration not as a story of separation, but as one of connection. It is a continual process through which the boundaries between cultures become porous, and through which something shared and enduring can emerge.”

Brett Leigh Dicks ‍