M L Casteel
American Interiors depicts the psychological repercussions of war and military service through images of the interiors of cars owned by US veterans. Through working with veterans over a five-year period, M L Casteel became aware of the subtle indicators of past traumatic experience. He also recognized that the condition in which we live can often be a signifier of our well-being, and that even the state of car interiors can be seen as a manifestation of human interiors.
American Interiors explores the area between “the circumstantial and the evident” and it is in the space that separates the slickly produced military recruitment ads from the statistics about rates of veteran homelessness and suicide that this work resides. Casteel balances the empathy he feels for those who have survived the military experience, with a deep sense of outrage towards America’s industrial military complex and the institutionalized violence of warfare.
Zoom Artist Talk, July 7, 2021
M L Casteel (American, b. 1980) is an award-winning photographer and educator whose work focuses on the perils and triumphs of the human condition. Casteel attended the Hartford Art School International Limited Residency Photography Program and gained an MFA in Photography in 2015. His work has been featured in TIME Magazine, The Washington Post, CNN, and the Guardian, amongst other publications. Casteel’s first book, American Interiors, was published by Dewi Lewis Publishing in 2018 and was shortlisted for the Paris Photo- Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards: First Photobook Prize. Featuring essays by Jörg Colberg and Ken MacLeish, the book is available at www.dewilewis.com.