Kris Graves: Privileged Mediocrity

The Infrastructure of Power

Mixing seemingly deadpan architectural portraiture with poetically frozen moments of daily life, photographer Kris Graves reveals the living history of racism and elitism in the United States.

In Privileged Mediocrity, Graves shows us both the brutality and beauty of American life. Each image of a person or a place tells its own complex, moving story and cumulatively capture a longing for the unfulfilled promise of a true democracy. Racism can be seen in infrastructure and planning nationwide, from the human and built environment impacts of redlining and unsustainable public housing; to spaces where homeless communities are able to exist temporarily before they are dismantled. This book seeks to explore the subtleties of the built realities and the planned experience across racial, class, and gender lines. It explores how racism, capitalism, and power have shaped the country and how that can be seen and experienced in everyday life.