As a photographer, I’m drawn to fading facades, crumbling bricks, loose mortar, broken glass, and unhinged doors—fragments of spaces once shaped by human hands. These remnants speak to me not just as physical decay, but as powerful Jungian symbols of the collective unconscious. They reflect archetypes of loss, memory, and transformation. When I photograph these sites, I see more than abandoned buildings—I see the shadow of a once-thriving culture, a fading humanity etched into every surface. The repetition of these visual motifs becomes a language of forgotten heritage, a quiet elegy for what we’ve left behind. In these ruins, I find the universal story of creation and decline, resilience and erosion, and I use my lens to hold that space—to honor it, question it, and invite others to feel the echo of a collective past that still shapes us.
As Americans, we share a common spirit—rooted in grit, autonomy, and an unwavering belief in a better tomorrow—exemplified by the bricklayer, the shop steward, the blacksmith, the farmer, the mechanic, and the engineer. These hands, once calloused from honest labor, transformed untamed land into a global cultural force. But now, as the mills, factories, and foundries they built slowly surrender to time, their faded bricks and broken glass echo with stories of sacrifice and hope. When I’m shooting an abandoned shoe or woolen mill or a crumbling Paper plant, I see more than decay—I see my grandfather, a Frenchman, quietly sitting at the dining room table sipping Ballantine Ale as he tabulated his weekly earnings for each Army boot he crafted. I think of my maternal grandmother, just twelve when she left County Mayo for America, laboring in Boston, Worcester, and Manchester mills to bring her sisters to safety. Amid the rubble, I envision women bound to the grind of punch clocks and endless workstations—today’s return processors at LL Bean, where a two-minute delay could mean lost wages. Their fight, like ours, is relentless. There is no luxury of rest, only the constant push for dignity, freedom, and the promise of something better. In these ruins, I don’t just see what’s been lost—I see who we are, and the enduring spirit of those who made us.
