The photographs contained in this site represent seven years of work. I began with the city of Chicago–the city of neighborhoods–and in that time photographed over 150 of those neighborhoods. From there, the project branched out into other locations. At first, these places were cities and towns around the Midwest. Then I explored farther away–to the northeast, the south, the Plaines and the west coast. Some of the larger places photographed across the continental U.S. include: Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis, Atlanta, Tampa, Denver, Kansas City, Saint Louis, Las Vegas, San Antonio, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Eventually, I ventured as far away as Hawaii, Madrid, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

In total, the work in Chicago amounts to over 10,500 photographs (roughly 6700 in film and 3800 in digital). Around the U.S., the database includes over 6,500 more photos (pretty evenly divided between film and digital). And from three other cities around the world, it includes over 1600 more photos (all digital). In total, this database houses close to 19,000 photographs.

As interesting and challenging (in a number of ways) as this work has been for me, the time has finally come to move forward. A combination of ‘data collection’ burnout and other work interests and commitments have combined to indicate to me that it is time to move forward in my work. As far as this project goes, that means moving out of the photographic documentary (or data collection) phase and into the next part of the project–analysis and writing. Anyone who has read either the FAQ or the ‘About’ documents on this site is aware that, from the beginning, this project was designed as a piece of sociological research into a number of subjects. Like all such projects, data collection is only one aspect of the work and its purpose is to serve the larger goal–answering the research questions that drove the project to begin with.

Thus, in order to focus on the next phases of the work, I am concluding my regular updates to this site, and it should be considered in a state of quasi-permanent hiatus for the foreseeable future. The site will remain up and available in its current configuration, with all photos in the database fully accessible. I will also continue to check the site email on a regular basis, so feel free to continue sending in any comments or questions regarding the photos that you might have.