Let me get the most important thing out of the way first: I like my hash browns scattered and covered. My preferred accompaniment to that crispy mass of potatoes is a two-egg breakfast, scrambled, with wheat toast, a side of bacon, crispy, and black coffee.

Now, let me address the other question: What compelled me to spend the better part of 2018 traveling throughout the southeastern United States with the sole purpose of visiting Waffle House restaurants?

I didn't do it as a testament to Waffle House’s cultural importance in the South. Nor did I do it because of my affinity toward Waffle House.

I did it because I wanted to see through each restaurant’s windows. I wanted to see the surrounding architecture, catalog adjacent businesses, and understand the public and commercial space around each restaurant. I also wanted to ask questions about our society and our social, economic, and political divisions.

The resulting photography project, “Waffle House Vistas,” collects images that document Southern communities as seen through the windows of Waffle Houses. In each instance, the point of view is the customer’s. Each photograph looks out from booths and chairs, making the viewer a witness to intertwined narratives of poverty, transience, and politics.

These photographs ask viewers to look up from their hash browns and acknowledge the institutions and structures that create real, yet rarely acknowledged boundaries that feel impossible to break through for much of this country. And Waffle House is the perfect place to have this conversation — beloved as a Southern cultural icon and scattered throughout our region like hash browns on a grill. But while the Waffle House feels like a “safe space” for such discussions, it has not, it is not without its own controversies.