Appalachian Landscapes (ongoing, title in progress)

Florida Landscapes (ongoing, title in progress)

This is the start of a comparative photographic study of two disparate American landscapes: the faded coal country of Appalachian central Pennsylvania and the oversaturated seasonal corridors of coastal Florida. These images focus on the stories told by architecture, the scars on buildings, and the functional beauty of places built not for leisure or performance, but for the ancestral routine of living.

In Pennsylvania, the work functions as a plea against abandonment. These images document the quietness of a fractured but surviving state, a region rife with the soot and struggle of an uncertain economic future. It is a project rooted in the guilt of the artist’s own removal, seeking to prove that these neglected regions are still rife with value and possibility.

The Florida series mirrors this search for reality through a lens of hope and loss, though the aesthetic shifts to a world of shrinking agriculture and stagnant seasonal commerce. Photographed in the early morning light, these scenes reveal a different type of neglect: one buried under the weight of oversaturated tourism and seasonal economic shifts.

When viewed together, the two series highlight a shared economic reality that leaves many residents in the dust. By bringing the eye back to the roadside, the work asks a question: what is truly lost when we trade ancestral functionality for the elusive promise of greater things?