American Ruins

The deterioration of the American inner city stands in sharp contrast to the prosperity characteristic of the United States for much of the twentieth century. Photographer and sociologist Camilo José Vergara has spent years documenting the decline of the built environment in New York City; Newark and Camden, New Jersey; Philadelphia; Baltimore; Chicago; Cary, Indiana; Detroit; and Los Angeles. His photographic sequences show formerly grand civic and commercial edifices as ghostly ruins and then as empty lots or flimsy new buildings. At once a scathing critique of national indifference to the plight of the inner city and a meditation on the aesthetic impact of desolate and neglected buildings, American Ruins stands as a witness to a vanishing era of the American city.