PORTRAIT OF AMERICAN DEMOLITION DERBY

Matt Seidel

A seven-year photographic study of demolition derbies in rural counties of the Midwest and California, regions tied directly to the photographer’s own history. The work examines these last-man-standing motorsport events as communal rituals, where townspeople in overlooked American landscapes find release and assert identity through a rarely-seen, ritualized act of creation and destruction.

The 145-color photograph sequence, culled from a massive archive of over 40,000 images, is paced cinematically, moving from quiet preparation and intimate portraits to moments of intense impact and fire, capturing both the spectacle’s force and the cultural landscape that harbors it.