Chris Verene was born in Galesburg, Ill., in 1969, and began taking pictures of his friends and neighbors as a teenager, as soon as he learned how to use a camera. Galesburg is a small railroad town with 34,000 people that looks to nearby Peoria -- the politician’s epitome of Podunk America -- as "the big city." The town is 84 percent white and economically depressed, with a median household income of about $32,000 a year.

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