A body of work shaped by a sense of American dysphoria by photographer Orpheus Acosta. Born and based in New York, Acosta was adopted at two months old by a Puerto Rican family. At 16, Acosta went in search of information about his adoption. He began documenting his environments through photography and video, often exploring feelings of displacement in his work. Acosta holds a BFA in Photography from SUNY Purchase. These images are part of an ongoing project rooted in personal experience. Reflecting on how identity and emotion are mediated through systems that promise visibility yet often produce distance, dysphoria emerges here not as spectacle, but as atmosphere—the gaps between people, the repetition of reaching out, and the quiet recognition that connection is never guaranteed.

“Long Time Caller, First Time Listener explores the dissonance between the promise of connection and the reality of isolation. Borrowing its title from the language of radio call-in culture, the project frames communication as an act of reaching outward without certainty of being received, where expression is constant but understanding remains unstable. Each image exists as both a call and an echo, contributing to a larger, unresolved conversation about what it means to speak, to listen, and to exist within a culture where both are increasingly out of sync.”