I was raised in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a town secretly built in 1942 as part of the Manhattan Project. Growing up queer in East Tennessee, I became aware of an unchecked masculinity embodied through rugged individualism, Southern family values, and the atomic bomb’s legacy. My town’s culture was relentlessly focused on projecting strength, yet it was this very emphasis that made those who fell outside of that expectation feel weak. To Snare the Sun is a series of photographs that explore the creation of the atomic bomb as a stand-in for American masculinity and hubris in my hometown. Oak Ridge was built to achieve a militaristic goal. I want to know what it means to live in the shadow of that creation and navigate the legacy it left behind.