After winning the Artist Under 30 award at New Hampshire's Lotte Jacobi exhibition, Bristol photographer Nico Amato will soon see his work on a Rhode Island billboard.

Amato, a fine art photographer, has been selected as Rhode Island's photographer for The Fifty. The Fifty is a national project by the photography platform VSCO that selects one photographer from each state and places their work on a billboard in that state.

Amato's selected image is the first in his series "State of the Union": a torn, sun-faded American flag stretched across a doorway, photographed in Provincetown, Mass. VSCO will announce the billboard's Rhode Island location on its project page, vsco.co/50/rhode-island.

"It stopped me, because it felt more like a barrier than a welcome, an eerie feeling for such a familiar symbol," Amato said of the image. "As someone building a career from the smallest state in the union, it means a lot to represent Rhode Island specifically, and to bring my work to people who might never step into a gallery."