In his second monograph, Little Cities, Rich-Joseph Facun guides viewers on a meandering meditation through Southeastern Ohio by depicting the vernacular post-industrial landscape. In their quiet formality, the images call to mind past dreams, present disillusionment, and gently nudge us to look beyond what can be seen on the surface. Through recurring motifs, Facun excavates remaining signs of the Indigenous communities who once called this region home. In mankind’s hubris, we want to believe we shape the land we live on. Facun’s photographs remind us that the landscape contains memory, and it is witness to our misdeeds.
Rich-Joseph Facun is a photographer of Indigenous Mexican and Filipino descent. His work aims to offer an authentic look into endangered, bygone, and fringe cultures—those transitions in time where places fade but people persist. The exploration of place, community and cultural identity present themselves as a common denominator in both his life and photographic endeavors. Facun creates commissions for various publications, including NPR, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, Vox, Adweek, Education Week, The FADER, Frank 151, Topic, The National (UAE), Telerama (France), The Globe and Mail (Canada) and Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), among others. Additionally, Facun’s work has been recognized by or featured in Photolucida’s Critical Mass, CNN, British Journal of Photography, The Washington Post, Feature Shoot, The Image Deconstructed, The Photo Brigade, Looking at Appalachia, and Pictures of the Year International.
His first monograph, Black Diamonds, was published by Fall Line Press in 2021. Hi second monograph, Little Cities, was published by Little Oak Press in 2022 and is available here.