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Presented as part of the Adelaide festival 2026 program, South Australian artist Alex Frayne explores the fractured psyche of modern America through photography. Shot almost entirely on analogue film over three years and across nine states, Frayne’s lens focuses on the fringes of the west, deep south and Bible belt
Manifest Destiny runs 28 February to 15 March at ILA (Immersive Light and Art)
Church and State, Northern Arizona
’Scattered across the sunbelt are places of worship that invite passersby to pause and consider the proximity of religion to daily life in the “land of the free”. A sign might read “Pray, Vote, then Pray again”. Twice I was approached by locals who asked if they could bless me. I agreed. They would say a little prayer for me and ask for my safety and success.’ Photograph: Alex Frayne
Extra-Terrestrial Highway, Nevada
‘The road in Nevada was invitational and eerily quiet. I was on Highway 375, the so called “Extra-Terrestrial freeway”. From nowhere, a UFO materialised overhead with a thunderous clap. Except it wasn’t a UFO. It was an F18 Super-Hornet on a routine sortie from the nearby Nellis airbase. I continued on, into the belly of the beast.’
Sans Irony, New Mexico
‘Driving north through New Mexico I caught sight of this place. It had pretty much everything a trucker en route to devoutly religious Utah might want. The only thing missing, however, was irony.’
I Will Have What She’s Having. Cadillac Jack’s, Sun Valley, California
‘Time and again I visited diners in America expecting them to be not dissimilar to those half-remembered fragments of movie scenes that had etched their way into my unconscious the way the classics do in any art form. And too often all I saw was a hollow shell of a place.’
Swinging in the Wind Behind a Place of Worship, Arkansas
‘Through the Bible belt I saw places that recalled Malick’s Days of Heaven. I wandered around the back of a church and remembered 100 similar scenes in rural South Australia. “What was the difference?” I ruminated. In Australia, there is a comical context for much of what is sacred and profane; there is mocking, there is “piss-taking”, there is satire and irony. In America, religion is not treated this way outside the bi-coastal megacities. Religion is everything, is all-encompassing and not to be made fun of. I laughed as I pressed the shutter.’
Push Ups, Go! Venice Beach, California
‘First impressions are often the ones that stand ready to be subverted, undermined. I’d arrived in the city of lost angels. The city of moguls, of dreamers, drifters and grifters, of hope and renewal.’
Mini Prayer for Motel, Nelson, Nevada
‘I paid a taxi driver in Las Vegas $500 to drive me to his favourite ghost town. The place was two hours from The Strip. We arrived in Nelson, an old silver mining town that despite billing itself as truly deserted was in reality anything but. It was actually a sort of museum for ghost town tropes that Hollywood had imaged.’
Oklahoma Scarecrow, left, and We Pray for Oil in Texas, right
‘Oil is something west Texans are encouraged to pray for, to covet, consume and treat like a member of the family. There was something balletic about the way the pumps moved and flexed.’
Carnegiea Gigantea, Mesa, Arizona
‘It perturbed me somewhat that the only cultural reference point I possessed for this frame was the backdrops of the Roadrunner cartoons from the 1960s. I felt I needed to unlearn all those simplistic film tropes and to see the landscape as it truly was. This photo was taken on the ancestral home of the Maricopa people.’
Elegy for Ghosts of Fast Food, Texas
‘Food in America is indeed fast. But the term “fast food” is often used in a very general way to describe a certain cuisine that is readily available and mostly unhealthy and sometimes delicious.’
The Poor, Quiet South (I), Louisiana
‘The south never really recovered from the Civil War. The south is quiet and beautiful, and laced with the sounds of jazz and funk and gospel; music which was exported to the world; and the world loved it.’
The Conceit and The Reality Roubidoux, Drive-In, Riverside, Southern California
‘Cinema was the mechanism to carry the dreams, power and glamour of America. But behind the facade this drive-in is a sad sight, with diligent people rifling through bins.’
School’s Out, Forever, Toyah, Texas
‘The old high school in Toyah, Texas, stands forlorn in the afternoon heat. On October the 25th, 1906, a black man named JI Pitts was dragged to death and then hanged for living with his white wife, Eva. In September 1928, Amelia Earhart made an unscheduled five-day stop in Toyah to adjust her aircraft’s carburetor. Several youngsters were seen in photos around her plane.’
Ragtime for the Flower Child, Haight and Ashbury, San Francisco
‘San Francisco was a place I knew only from the movies and music side of things. I walked up to the Haight to see if I could find the spirit of ’67. A girl played acoustic guitar on the pavement; she looked like Sissy Spacek in Badlands. A woman in a Kombi crossed the intersection before a man holding a walkie-talkie called “Cut!!” It was all just a scene in a movie. The people I’d seen were actors. It was an indie film being shot in San Fran. People worked on it for “points,” ie it was un-waged.’
Broadway, Los Angeles, top, and Darktown, bottom
‘The lucky ones live in old buildings near Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. The less fortunate are so afflicted by disease and opioid use as to form a sort of tragic chorus in a play, speaking in tongues, hallucinating, writhing and talking to a God that seems not to hear them. Except this isn’t a play or movie, this is real and very hard to photograph.’
Drug Store, Mississippi
‘I wanted to photograph ordinary Americans; sometimes I’d pick random small towns on the map. Often in the deep south along the Mississippi I found towns with nobody about. Where the hell was everybody? I’d photographed desolate towns in South Australia but this was different. Where were they hiding?’
Abandoned Drive-in, Nevada
‘Sam Shepard’s European publishers contacted me and licensed this image of an old drive-in for the reprint of his book Cruising Paradise. The photo fits the theme of his work comprised of tales from the 1980’s set in the lonely west.’
Forever and Ever, Amen, Oklahoma
‘Gas stations in America are like small shrines to the 20th century, sometimes bereft of fuel or people but always resonating with a kind of rusty alien elegance and honesty.’Explore more on these topics
