Margaret Bourke-White’s At the Time of the Louisville Flood serves as a powerful symbol of disparity, contrasting the promise of the American Dream with the reality faced by marginalized communities in crisis. In this reimagined puzzle form, the iconic billboard remains intact while the flood victims below fragment and fall off the table’s edge.

By destabilizing the lower portion of the image, The American Way critiques the myth of American exceptionalism and the erasure of historical and contemporary injustices in favor of a carefully curated national narrative. The physical disintegration challenges viewers to consider whose suffering is acknowledged, how crises are remembered, and the systemic failures that persist whether we choose to acknowledge them or not.