I have lived most of my life in cities in the United States. For me, the urban environment provides an endless tableau of opportunities to tell stories. Cities have souls. They tell tales about the lives of their diverse residents. They shape and create the destinies of hundreds of thousands and more people. They experience rises and falls, tragedies and glories.
In my case, I was born in one of the most important American cities, Detroit, in the mid-1960s, just as it was beginning its decades-long collapse that continues today. I grew up just outside of St. Louis, another great American city, which also has seen a slow decay to just a shell of its former brilliance. The fall of these cities embody the decline of the United States’ manufacturing sector and reveal the impacts of globalization, trade under NAFTA, historic racial segregation, the rise of suburbs, and more. I also have lived multiple times over the past three decades in Seattle and Portland, in the Pacific Northwest. Both are ascending cities that have now become almost impossible for ordinary working people to afford.
My photos of these cities explore the past and how the past reverberates loudly in the present. They also showcase how millions of people, over time, have created urban centers that they all called and still call home. My series profiles St. Louis, Detroit, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon.
