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James Year
Project type
Photographs
Date
August 2025
Location
Baltimore, Md
James Year is a working-class Iowa farm boy who got lost on his way to college and ended up in the U.S. Air Force. That unexpected, globetrotting enlistment led to degrees in sociology and media production. He’s won numerous state and national grants and awards—and even a few international ones. He was mistakenly awarded runner-up for the Alexia Professional Grant in 2022, and then won first place on purpose in 2023. He was the first graduate student at
Syracuse University to do either, for his master’s thesis: Stealing Fire: The Collision of Artificial Intelligence and Trucking.
After two years of trying to get that multi-award-winning documentary photography project published, it was adapted into video by More Perfect Union. That video went viral, with over 6 million views on YouTube and Instagram, and was featured on multiple podcasts and radio shows with audiences up to 1 million regular listeners. James is unapologetically biased in favor of the working class—rural to urban, But especially in favor of America’s truckers. People who work for a living deserve better. He’s committed to telling their stories and exploring the intersection between labor, technology, and the environment.
