The Post-Industrial Rust Belt

For forty years I’ve photographed the social landscape of the Rust Belt, America’s industrial heartland, which has been in steady decline since the 1980s. Houses have disintegrated, city blocks are boarded up, factories have been dismantled. People accustomed to a life of hard work have lost their jobs, their homes, and their place in the world. My photographs are, in part, about the specific identity of a place—its topography, its architecture, its history, the arrangement and decoration of back yards. I try to make pictures whose details serve as clues to understanding the values, aspirations, hopes, and dreams of the people who inhabit that landscape. The circumstances of the post-industrial Rust Belt reflect an increasing inequality found throughout Twenty-First Century America, where most people aren’t as well off as they used to be, or as they would like to be. At the same time, I want the pictures to also show signs of hope. The inhabitants of factory towns are tenacious and resilient. Though they may live next door to an abandoned factory out of economic necessity, they nonetheless struggle to achieve some semblance of the American Dream under less than ideal circumstances.