15 Photographs of the American Flag from Across the US

A photo essay curated by Smithsonian magazine features 15 images of the American flag captured by various photographers across the United States, spanning from 2016 to 2025. The collection includes an illuminated flag display in New York City (Yoshinori Sawa, 2024), flags circling the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. (Agnieszka Wieczorek, 2024), a tattered replica of the Fort McHenry flag in Baltimore (Nicolas Calle, 2016), a WWII veteran holding a weathered flag in Tennessee (Phyllis Tatum, 2019), a rider carrying the flag at a rodeo in Arizona (Josef Buergi, 2025), a flag seen through a broken window in San Francisco (Eugene Reshetov, 2021), a Navy veteran embracing a flag in Florida (John Merriam, 2023), a flag draping a barn in Washington state (Linda Lucas, 2020), the flag with the Statue of Liberty in Alabama (Blair Ramsey, 2020), a toddler in patriotic attire in Massachusetts (Zachary Ray, 2019), flags on sailboats in Rhode Island (Bern Altman, 2018), a parachutist with a flag in Florida (Norman Bradney, 2021), hay bales with flags in Colorado (Marjorie Nanian, 2024), a flag reflected on Alcatraz Island in California (Virginia Hines, 2024), and a veteran flying a flag kite at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (Agnieszka Wieczorek, 2024). The essay was published on July 2, 2026, and edited by Jeff Campagna and Tracy Scott Forson.