In the shorthand of American geography, the middle is often treated like a void — something you cross rather than arrive at. “Flyover country” is the phrase, tossed off with casual condescension, as if the heart of the nation was just that negative space between coasts. Photographer Richard Sharum decided to sit with that dismissal, and then drive straight through it.
An editorial and documentary photographer, Sharum traveled a 100-mile-wide corridor running down the geographic spine of the United States, from the Dakotas through Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and into Texas. He spoke with more than 4,000 people and made upward of 14,000 photographs, searching not for spectacle, but for something quieter and more elusive: the connective tissue of contemporary American life.
The result is “Spina Americana,” a documentary photography book that resists easy narratives about red states and blue states, rural versus urban, or who belongs where. Instead, Sharum’s images linger on people — mechanics, surgeons, farmers, prisoners, police officers, migrant laborers, exotic dancers — encountered not as symbols, but as individuals occupying the same unsettled moment.
“This term, flyover country, was one I’d heard my entire life, but had never really thought about when it came to the condescension it implied,” said Sharum. “I felt that this part of our country had been ignored politically, socially, and culturally for decades, with its obscurity creating a subtle but consequential vacuum that had implicitly added fuel to our national divisions. I knew that in order for me to find out what America is, I needed to travel its central corridor and see it for myself.”
Sharum’s approach is deliberately unsensational. There are no click-bait images engineered for outrage or pity. Landscapes stretch wide and quiet. Faces meet the camera without theatrical framing. People are given equal space and status, regardless of background or belief. In a time dominated by hot takes and instant judgment, “Spina Americana” asks viewers to slow down, to look longer than we are used to and, perhaps, longer than is comfortable.
The book is divided into thematic chapters that explore labor, faith, identity, authority, and belonging across the region. Mennonites and Lutherans appear alongside Indigenous Americans and Mexican-American families. Generational farmers with German, Scandinavian, or Ukrainian roots share space with recent arrivals and migrant workers. The throughline isn’t sameness, but coexistence: the fact that vastly different lives are unfolding side by side, often without acknowledgment.
The final chapter, “Peril and Promise,” sharpens the project’s moral edge. Images associated with hate, decay, and danger are placed in direct conversation with scenes of duty, care, and community. The effect isn’t accusatory so much as urgent, a visual argument that what survives depends on what we choose to see and who we’re willing to recognize as neighbors.
Sharum describes photography as a form of education, and education, in turn, as the foundation of empathy. It’s a philosophy rooted in long-form work rather than quick consumption, and “Spina Americana” feels intentionally out of step with the algorithmic churn of modern media. This is a book that trusts the viewer to sit with complexity rather than resolve it.
For readers in places like Oklahoma — included not incidentally, but centrally — the project lands with particular resonance. This isn’t the middle reduced to caricature or nostalgia. It’s the middle rendered as it is: complicated, fractured, resilient, and unfinished.
“Spina Americana” doesn’t claim to answer what America is. What it offers instead is something rarer: a sustained act of attention, directed toward a part of the country too often treated as invisible. In doing so, Sharum suggests that understanding who we are might begin not at the edges, but right down the center.
A lecture and book signing will be held at Commonplace Books (1325 N. Walker) on Monday, March 9 at 7:00 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
More images from the book can be seen on the project’s website: richardsharum.com/spina-americana
This article appears in Spring Break Splash.