Modern Midwestern (2025) is an ongoing flash photography series that documents everyday life while invoking the visual language of Western cowboy culture. Using colored sheets over an off-camera flash, the work reimagines ordinary scenes with a heightened, cinematic intensity. Rooted in my family history of horse shows, broncos, guns, and muscle cars, the series reflects on the tension between inherited traditions and my own suburban reality. Having grown up surrounded by traces of this culture yet separated from fully living it, I use photography as a way to bridge that distance. Using this as a reconnection to family memory and an exploration of how identity is shaped by place.