PROJECTS

Common Ground: Keepers of Local Memory

The project, Common Ground: Keepers of Local Memory, focuses on the people and historic societies across Central Pennsylvania keeping history alive. Small-town historical societies occupy a unique and often precarious position within the cultural landscape. Typically housed in former schools, libraries, private homes, or repurposed civic buildings, these organizations function as community archives, museums, and gathering places. The project creates a visual and textual record of the individuals who care for our history and creating a sense of place and identity.

Using large-format film photography and conversation transcripts, the project works to create a record of preservation and community memory-making—components that are central to local history but rarely documented in a systematic way and how everyday citizens shape the historical record of their communities.

Ultimately, the work asks broader questions about who is responsible for history, how memory is maintained at the local level, and what is at stake when the passion about our history disappears. The project is being developed as both a regional documentation initiative and a touring exhibition.

The Long Way Home

A Documentary Exploration of People, Place, and Belonging in Contemporary America

The Long Way Home is an ongoing documentary photography project exploring the connections between people, place, and belonging in contemporary America. Primarily using a traditional 4×5 large-format film camera, photographer Eric Dusenbery travels through communities and overlooked corners of the American landscape, creating portraits of individuals whose lives reflect the character, memory, and continuity of the places they call home.

The project focuses on people who sustain the social and cultural fabric of their communities through work, creativity, stewardship, and long-standing commitments to place. Subjects include artists, ranchers, historians, small business owners, farmers, and others whose stories often exist beyond the attention of mainstream media. Accompanied by recorded conversations and personal narratives, the photographs explore how individuals shape—and are shaped by—the communities in which they live.

At a time of rapid social, economic, and technological change, The Long Way Home asks enduring questions about identity, memory, and attachment to place. What creates a sense of belonging? How do communities maintain continuity across generations? And what can we learn from those who remain deeply rooted in the landscapes, traditions, and relationships that give meaning to everyday life? Through portraiture and storytelling, the project seeks to create a contemporary record of the people and places that continue to sustain American community life.