Over the course of a decade, French photographer Jean-Luc Bertini traveled the length and breadth of the United States, creating portraits of the unique circumstance of isolation fostered by the country’s geographic circumstances and its espousal of an individualist ethos. Bertini casts his subjects against the vast backdrops of the country, exploring all the nuances of isolation, from solitude to loneliness. This perspective produces an usual and fresh take on America as a nation.

In his preface, Richard Ford, author of The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land and Let Me Be Frank With You, focuses on the physiognomies of solitude in America: Looking at his work, we build up an idea of the unique character of American solitudes, in non-binary terms, in which what is ours does not only belong to us.