top of page

All You Can Be examines the everyday landscapes and encounters through which military service is made visible and imaginable. Made across North Carolina, the photographs follow recruiting offices, advertisements, public events, prospective recruits, recruiters, and the ordinary spaces where military and civilian life meet.

The title draws from the U.S. Army recruiting slogan “Be All You Can Be,” language that frames military service through possibility, transformation, and an imagined future. The project considers these promises alongside the social and material conditions in which decisions about enlistment take shape: geography, family histories, economic opportunity, proximity to military installations, and the presence of recruiters within schools and communities.

Rather than treating enlistment as a single moment of decision, All You Can Be looks at the infrastructure surrounding it. Recruiting offices occupy strip malls and commercial corridors. Military imagery appears beside restaurants, gyms, and highways. Recruiters enter schools, universities, sporting events, and other public spaces. Around military installations, uniforms, businesses, benefits, and traditions become part of the ordinary landscape.

Through photographs and interviews with recruiters, veterans, and prospective recruits, the project asks how military service comes to appear as one possible way forward, and what conditions make that future recognizable, available, and worth imagining.

bottom of page