The following images were taken in 2009 for my senior project entitled “The Deceitful Boom”.  Photographing ghost towns throughout California & Nevada, traveling to Detroit, as well as documenting abandoned Wal-Marts, I set out to illustrate the interconnectedness & illogicality of it all. Here is an abstract from the project’s accompanying essay:

“Witnessing the intensification of global crises such as peak oil, climate disruption, environmental disuse and ruination, over-population and its related issues of water & food scarcity; I have become very interested in how we have gotten ourselves into such a severe mire.  Iconizing economic growth and industry, capitalistic society has tailored itself a shiny new set of values derived from greed, disharmony, and short-sightedness. While a few benefit from this cut-throat style system, scores more become ensnared in a vicious financial cycle in which victims scrape by in stress saturated lives.    Not only is inequality promoted and perpetuated by this framework, but its liquidation of life-supporting earth systems is truly monstrous.
Recording crumbling scenes and blighted landscapes of boomtowns in their various states, the series tells tales of ill-conceived societal structuring and serves as a memorandum and affirmation of the transient nature of all life. It is my great aspiration that in viewing this project in tandem with serious consideration, readers may arrive at the conclusion that components of our current system are simply illogical.”