My project EUSA documents American-themed places in Europe and European-themed places in America. 

In the U.S. these “European” venues resemble a land of make-believe, like something out of a fairy-tale.

They are magical, whimsical and quaint and the attendees are paying tribute to their ancestry and origins. In Europe, these American-themed amusement parks and festivals reveal an ongoing enthusiasm for a mythologised “America” of the past, when the U.S. was considered glorious and free with cowboys and Indians roaming the wide-open plains just like in the movies. The foundation of these locations was to honour the “other,” but what was once characteristic has now ultimately become a caricature.

Photographing these fascinating locations across these two continents my goal was to illustrate the enthusiasm we have for one another’s culture and heritage. These exaggerated reconstructions bear little authenticity rather are a perception of fantasy, a sense of what the other wishes the reality to be. And through this spirit of camaraderie, if only for that moment, the participants are granted membership to another’s culture. 

Globalisation has made the uniqueness of a particular country less significant thus creating an indistinguishable common world community.

EUSA is a reaction to the homogenisation of European and American cultures. Being enthralled by another country’s way of life does not mean that it is always an accurate portrayal rather it becomes a sentimental and idealised depiction; an homage to a heritage that isn’t one’s own. 

We are living in tumultuous times where our origins seem to be painfully important to us. Brexit has just occurred largely in part due to people’s nationalistic pride, nostalgia for a better (albeit whiter) time in Britain and intolerance of immigrants infiltrating Mother England. In the United States xenophobia and racism are the platform of a certain candidacy and at this moment in time it looks incredibly plausible that here too hate and fear will trump (pardon the pun) love, acceptance and rationality.

I began this project in June 2008 photographing High Chaparral, a wild-west theme park in southern Sweden. Since then I’ve visited over twenty-five locations on both sides of the Atlantic including ‘Indian’ festivals in Germany, a Tulip Festival in Orange City, Iowa, an American Civil War reenactment in the Czech Republic, a Maifest in Leavenworth, Washington, numerous Oktoberfests around the United States, and a variety of ‘Cowboy and Indian’ amusement parks throughout Europe.