Standoff is a series of photographs made at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge over a four-week span in 2016. During this time, armed protesters, led by brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy, occupied the refuge. Over multiple trips, I photographed the media frenzy, the occupiers, the surrounding area and the mythology of the American West that informs it all- cowboys and gunslingers and lawmen and Mormons and environmentalists and reporters, etc.; all fighting for and over freedom and land in the middle of nowhere outside the small town of Burns in Eastern Oregon. 

Now… six years, two monumental elections, and a Capitol attack later, it’s clear that this occupation was more than just an aberrant bit of chaos in the sagebrush. Perhaps it was a bellwether all along- a classic Western, with themes of Independence, land, freedom, and God, updated for modern times, streaming live on occasion, and complete with a gunfight in a remote canyon towards the end.