This series began during my last week home in DC before I left for college. Growing up in the city, I was always surrounded by iconic testaments to America’s past that people travel from all over the country, even all over the world, to see. I wanted to engage with these structures through photography but avoid the tendency some young photographers have to create postcard-esque images. I drove to the National Mall and then Arlington National Cemetery with my father on a hot, swampy late-August day to understand their rituals and history.