Photographs by Lindsay Godin, Text by Conner Gordon

It is 2019, and our elected representatives are explicitly defending white supremacy from the halls of Congress. In a January profile in The New York Times, Representative Steve King of Iowa responded to allegations of racism, anti-immigrant bias, and ties to anti-Semitic groups with a question of his own. “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive,” King asked. ”Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

Looking at the photographs in Lindsay Godin’s History is Written by the Winner, one cannot help but wonder whether these were the classrooms King had in mind. As a graduate student in photography at the University of Iowa, Godin began to photograph public school classrooms to examine facets of totalitarianism and propaganda in America’s political culture. What she found, whether in Utah, New Jersey, or King’s home state of Iowa, were classroom environments that disguised as much about America’s history as they endeavored to reflect.

In the classrooms of Godin’s photographs, American history is selectively stripped down to its most nationalistic form. Paintings of American war heroes share wall space with military recruiting posters and an image of John Wayne. A massive ceiling of red and white stripes looms over rows of chairs with legs capped in tennis balls, preventing any stray mark from tarnishing the space. Godin’s photographs call attention to the artificiality of these spaces, as if the occupants are meant to pass through a stage for a story that has already been resolved.

Largely absent from these spaces is a reckoning with the violence central to the American narrative. To include it would threaten the resolution. Yet, as Godin’s photographs show, it is impossible to conceal this relationship entirely. In one image, artillery shells line the back wall of a classroom, an American flag and a map of the world hanging nearby. In another, a line of posters valorize the spread of freedom while memorializing the September 11th terrorist attacks. Such moments interrupt the static timelessness in which the classrooms are suspended, reminding the viewer of the very real violence at the core of our history.

Taken in sum, the classrooms Godin photographs paint a thin veneer over an American history built upon violence–violence against indigenous communities, violence against those it forced into bondage, violence against the politically expedient Other. Pushing back against this whitewashed story, the story that individuals like King will continue to defend, is not easy. Yet, by documenting these spaces, Godin calls us to reach for new narratives and find new ways of teaching them–to question the architecture of the stories we have been given.

See more of Lindsay’s work here.