“National Anthem is rich with Gilford’s tenderness for his subjects while imploring us to rethink the hegemony of the American cowboy.” 

— Vanity Fair 

“Through his attentiveness to each picture’s composition as well as to each individual’s sense of self, Gilford offers his subjects the same care that they provide one another.” 

— Drew Sawyer, Photography Curator, Brooklyn Museum 

“National Anthem has helped Gilford to accept who he really is, a queer child of rural south-west America, a fact that lends his project greater poignancy. It’s a homecoming of sorts, a return to the land, a metaphor, a dream. “It’s the future,” he says, “the America we all dream of — being able to be whatever we want to be.”

— The Guardian