Abandoned AmericaAbandoned America

If the creation of a structure represents the values and ideals of a time, so too does its subsequent abandonment and eventual destruction. In Abandoned America: Dismantling the Dream, photographer Matthew Christopher continues his examination of the ruins dotting the American cities and countryside as quiet catastrophes that have affected not only the nation's past but also its present and future. Rather than approaching sites with a voyeuristic detachment from the tragedies they represent, Christopher's essays intimately explore the losses and failures that led some of America's finest establishments to become viewed as little more than eyesores in communities that had once supported them. From the heartbreaking story of an institution that would become home to one of the country's worst cases of fatal neglect and abuse to the shattered remains of what was once the largest mall in the United States, this book asks what leads us to leave places behind and what the consequences of doing so are. From the country's largest privately owned zoo to a beachfront community left for dead when its bridge burned to the most expensive public school in the United States to an ocean liner larger than the Titanic, the haunting locations featured in this beautiful book of photography force us to confront who we were, who we are, and who we wish to become, and takes readers on a journey through some of the most dangerous and hard to access locations in the nation in a journey they will never forget.