American Drift

Paul McGilly is a Scottish-born photographer based in New York City. His photographic practice began in Los Angeles in 2020. When the pandemic emptied the city that spring, what remained was a version of LA stripped of its usual chaos — neon signs glowing against silent streets, architectural details normally obscured by activity suddenly visible. Sunset Strip became a landscape of isolated geometry. He bought his first professional camera and started working. Rather than return to New York, he stayed in California and extended the work into the American Southwest — a decision that reshaped his vision entirely. Over the following months he photographed Anza-Borrego, the Sierra Nevada, Death Valley, Monument Valley, the Mojave, and a long list of strange small towns in between: mid-century architecture crumbling gracefully, half-lit neon, shuttered motels, the geology underneath all of it. McGilly's photographs sit between documentation and surrealism. A rusted carnival figure, a dead motel sign, a roadside attraction past its useful life — he treats these subjects with reverence rather than irony. The work returns to a single idea: that meaning tends to collect in the places where human ambition meets geological indifference, and usually in places no one is looking.