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The #1 City in America
They are bulldozing the hill behind my house. Ten acres of
trees, shrubs, and weeds: gone. Hawks, foxes, deer, and groundhogs:
all gone. Our neighborhood fought this new subdivision for
over a year, anticipating gentrification, traffic complications,
and environmental degradation. But we lost, and now the sounds
of bulldozers and backhoes, punctuated by an occasional dynamite
blast, fill our days.
In this series of photographs, "The Number One City in America",
I wanted to document the recent boom in housing that is transforming
neighborhoods like mine. Previously untenable tracts of land are being
transformed aggressively and irrevocably. Wild, unclaimed spaces are
made into rows of cookie-cutter "McMansions," with no regard
for neighborhood character, environmental impact, or even land topology.
Each of us passes by construction sites daily, but we rarely see them.
In this body of work, I set out to see these transitional areas: the
displaced objects, the barren land. I photographed these landscapes
using long exposures at twilight to enhance the desolate feeling. My
aim is to explore this new type of development and to provoke a discussion
about its effects on the quality of life of our community.
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