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The United States of America is what it was founded to be. American Inquisition is a series of photographs that seeks to highlight the continued practice of oppressing the marginalized in service of the ruling class. A nation founded on white supremacist values can not exist without continuously upholding those values. Central to this conversation is the image of the human hand. Here it is used as a metaphor in a conversation about learned complacency of the governed and the reach of government into every facet of life. Valone explores the grim social contract of white America. Benefit from hard and soft power of the state and comply in violence against any group suggested by the powerful. The security of whiteness is granted for players willing to charade a false oppression to mask a very real one.
American Inquisition simultaneously represents the past and the present. The propaganda of American exceptionalism and the realities it tries to obscure have remained the same for two hundred and fifty years. It is up to individuals to see through the theater of politics and to decide for themselves whether to believe their eyes or the state.
