As a photojournalist I usually experience everything with a camera in my hands, and since I’ve lived outside of the United States for all of my adult life, my pictures have chronicled life around the world but not in my home country. Since returning to the U.S. after spending 20 years abroad, I’ve continued to look at my native but new surroundings as an outsider would, including watching our country’s most ubiquitous domestic news—the presidential elections—from the sidelines like a foreigner, marveling at and confused by this bizarre, exotic culture.

By way of TV, the web, and social media, we’re bombarded by repetitive campaign pictures and staccato video clips of America’s unique political theater. What are we to make of this