THE WHEEL is a near decade-long descent into the American demolition derby as ritual. Beneath collision and fire lies a generational act of identity, a public testing ground where survival is performed and bound to place, repeated and inherited without question.

Raised in rural Missouri, adjacent to these communities but separate from them, the photographer returns to the American interior, relinquishing a distance once imposed in search of identity and place, drawn back into a pattern that will not loosen its grip.

What appears chaotic reveals itself as cyclical and exacting. A recurring rite that returns each year unchanged, passed down, absorbed, enacted again. Born of a childhood memory, the work moves from county fair grandstands into the arena’s center, finding what remains when we submit our identities to the places that form us.

Photographed 2018-2026 across California and the American Midwest.