Unposed America: by Craig Semetko

Inspired by photography legends Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, and Elliott Erwitt, Craig Semetko is a collector of the spontaneous moment. With an uncanny knack for using Leica Cameras to capture the beautiful and unexpected that surrounds us all, Semetko offers a probing and arresting follow-up to his “Unposed” series. 

Semetko took up his camera with the intent of capturing the strife, civil discourse, and polarization across America. He spent two years photographing every major region of the country. As his photographic journey progressed, America Unposed unfolded into a unique visual narrative inspired by the de facto national motto, “E Pluribus Unum,” which is Latin for “out of many, one.” According to Semetko, “Even though we are very different with enormous diversity in ethnicity, education, and wealth, my hope is to show that out of the many, we are still one—each of us an American.”

Taking the pulse of today’s America, Semetko continues to craft his vision for what it means to live in such a large, perplexing country, one filled with countless examples of difficult circumstances and unquestionable beauty. America Unposed is both a testament to a true artist’s pursuit of capturing his vision and the result of a masterful technician dubbed by Esquire magazine as “a noble torchbearer” of the Leica Camera legacy.