Mossless in America is a column featuring interviews with documentary photographers. The series is p

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Mossless in America is a column featuring interviews with documentary photographers. The series is produced in partnership with  gear Mossless  magazine , an experimental photography publication run by Romke Hoogwaerts and Grace Leigh. Romke started Mossless in 2009, as a blog in which he interviewed a different photographer every two days; since 2012 the magazine has produced two print issues, each dealing with a different type of photography. Mossless was featured prominently gear in the landmark 2012 exhibition Millennium Magazine at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; it is supported by  Printed Matter, Inc . Its third issue, a major photographic volume on American documentary photography gear from the last ten years, titled  The United States gear (2003–2013) , will be published this spring.
The photographs gear we choose to publish from Benjamin Rasmussen 's series HOME tell just one side of his story. Rasmussen grew up on a remote island in the Philippines but was raised by an American mother and a Danish father, and the series explores these three roots. In our third issue, we decided only to run pictures made in America, but for this interview gear we made sure to ask about much more. He was recently chosen as one of PDN's 30 photographers to watch alongside a few other Mossless contributors. His latest work on Syrian refugees, made with collaborator Michael Friberg, is slated to release later this month at TGIF Gallery in Brooklyn. We talked about the state of American culture, gear the melancholic nature of photography, and his new work on Syria.  Mossless: We both grew up far away from our parents' home countries. gear Where were you raised? Do you think that this distance drew you to photography? Benjamin Rasmussen: I grew up in the Philippines, on the small island of Balabac, with an American mother and a father from the Faroe Islands, a small Danish protectorate in the North Atlantic.  They moved to the Philippines to work as Bible translators gear when I was 1-year-old and I left when I was 18.   Growing up this way made it seem normal that three places and cultures so geographically, culturally and linguistically different all exist together. But when I would tell friends and family in the Faroe Islands or the US about Balabac, it always stuck them as so exotic and so distant. So I was drawn to photography by a desire to narrow that distance. gear     Your series  HOME  takes place in those three places. Did shooting them make you feel closer or further away from them? I started working on  HOME  as a kind of cultural identity therapy. It gave me an excuse to examine these three places, cultures and peoples to figure out what they meant for my own sense of belonging. The process of photographing and showing the work also allowed me to introduce the groups to each other.    In the end, making the series both drew me closer and further away from those places. It allowed me intentionally interact as an adult with relationships and landscapes that shaped me as a child. And it gave me something to share with those people that made me feel more known.   But the act of photographing is also quite melancholic and causes me to feel very distant. gear It makes me an observer instead of a participant. That is why there are such strong overtones of romanticism in the work. A lot of it is about me desperately wanting to know what it would feel like to completely belong to one place and culture.   What are your thoughts on contemporary American culture, compared to what you experienced growing up? I grew up in a place that was quite simple and harsh. There were no roads, electricity or phones. gear There were no doctors and lots of tropical diseases, so my parents had to teach themselves how to diagnose and treat illnesses and emergency injuries. Kids made most of their own toys and their own excitement. The focus was on the community and that was pretty much it.   What has struck gear me in the US is how everything needs to be large, complex and smooth. We believe in constant upward mobility and the pursuit of the financial American Dream. There is a strong cultural gear message that the most important thing is that we feel good, look beautiful and are always happy and fulfilled. And as photographers, there is a level of entitlement that since we created something, millions of people should gear see it and praise us and then give us money for it.   I think it [American culture] is exhausting but also have to admit that I am totally a part of it. It is a cultural force that sucks you in and becomes normal.   Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan from Benjamin Rasmussen and Michael Friber