These photographs comprise a love song for north St. Louis. Over the last 20 years I have spent a lot of time in this part of the city, bicycling around, attending church meetings, working on projects, learning from elders. Like many, I have a deep affection for these places and an aching hope for a better future. The challenge in using photography to document such landscapes is to avoid overbearing narratives, either of ruin or redemption, because the story is never so clear-cut. Indeed, the temptation is strong to read these buildings and streets as a ruined landscape, full of desolation and resigned to an uncertain future. However, my hope is to create a visual record that opens up mu
Starting this fall, I will be showcasing photographs that I have taken over the years to document Urban Cultural Landscapes. The first in this series is Coyoacán, a former colonia and now part of sprawling Mexico City. The word Coyoacán means "place of the coyotes."
