Across the country, illegal dumping, toxic waste contamination and abandonment have left plots of land and the buildings on them unusable. These are brownfields. In some instances invisible, in others, in others an eyesore, these dead zones radiate blight into surrounding neighborhoods, chasing away residents and collapsing property values. The Brownfields project looks at these empty places, which distort and discolor the fabric of social space as well as the contemporary experience of place and landscape.

The sites depicted here were researched through the Environmental Protection Agency's website and through current and archival news sources. The images comprising Brownfields are meant to make these sites visible, giving us the opportunity to notice them and to consider and respond to the forces that created them.