The Long Way Around

Finding America One Conversation at a Time

Run time: Approximately 45-60 minutes
Plus Q&A

For six years, photojournalist and storyteller David Robert Farmerie traveled more than 350,000 miles across the United States, sitting down with Americans from vastly different communities, backgrounds, and political perspectives.

He wasn't looking for headlines. He was looking for answers.

What happens when we stop talking about one another and start talking with one another? What lies beneath the political labels and cultural divisions that have come to define so much of American life?

The Long Way Around is the story of that journey—and of the people Farmerie encountered along the way.

Through powerful photography, personal stories, and the conversations behind the images, Farmerie takes audiences into places and lives that are rarely seen beyond the headlines. His work explores dignity, freedom, belonging, institutional distrust, and what happens when people feel unheard.

But this is not a lecture about division.

It is a lecture about what Farmerie discovered on the other side of it: that beneath our arguments are people who are far more complicated, vulnerable, generous, and connected than the labels assigned to them suggest.

Drawing from his six-year In Search of America Project and his book, America Found: A Journey From Division to Connection, Farmerie offers an intimate, ground-level portrait of contemporary America—and a powerful reminder that listening may be one of the most important things we can do for one another.

The long way around, it turns out, may be the shortest path to understanding.

To inquire about booking a lecture for your organization, university, or community group, please contact David Robert Farmerie.