California, USA; 2003/04

Salton City, California

Once promoted as a resort on par with Palm Springs, the city today is surrounded by Martian-like mountains, rotten stench of hydrogen sulfide, thousands of dead fish and birds on the beach, and an unbearable heat above 100°F.

Today's ruins of hotels, marinas, yacht clubs, and vast unfinished housing developments questions ideas of modernization and unlimited progress of urban development.

La Jolla, California

This dystopic concept, of a world in which immigrants can labor in America but never live in, or become the responsibility, of American society, is not only a bizarre twist on the American Dream; in some ways this is the realization of the American Dream. The United States has always benefited from the low wage (and sometimes free) labor of recent immigrants, who are drawn to America, in part, by The Dream of instant success..

 

Northern California

1999 marks the sesquicentennial of the California Gold Rush, which brought vast changes to the Golden State. What began as a pristine western frontier of the United States became a destination — both real and imagined — for the entire nation and the world.