SORRY PARADISE
These photographs were taken in response to the growing sameness I began to notice spreading across my native California and the broader American West—a creeping uniformity defined by big-box retail centers, endless parking lots, and cookie-cutter housing developments. It was as though the region had traded its wild, unruly character for the smooth efficiency of repetition.
I found myself longing for an earlier time, a world more aligned with that of my parents and their parents before them. I wanted to bear witness—before it vanished entirely—to the remnants of a West that, though only a generation or two removed, already felt like a distant echo.
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The American West was once a destination for the restless, a place of wide horizons and unclaimed possibility. It drew those who sought the future—prosperity, independence, reinvention. Few had reason to look back. But now, with that future having arrived and settled into something more sterile, looking back offers its own kind of insight, even solace.
The modern-day ruins in these images are the scattered bones of a pivotal era in American life—what we might call the golden age of the automobile. Flush with postwar triumph, the nation surged westward. Route 66 was more than a road; it was a ribbon of ambition, stretching from the Midwest to the Pacific, ferrying dreamers into the sun-scorched promise of a new life. Air conditioning made the desert habitable, and the open road became a symbol of freedom.
These towns once thrived, pulsing with the rhythm of passing cars and lives in motion. But the passage of the Federal Highway Act in 1957 changed everything. Four-lane interstates were laid down like surgical incisions, cutting direct paths through the land—and cutting off the lifeblood of these small communities. In the name of speed and efficiency, the towns that had served the original route were bypassed, left to wilt in the shadow of progress.
At the same time, a new form of commerce began to rise—franchised chains with familiar logos and standardized offerings. They clustered at the off-ramps of the new interstates, siphoning business away from the old roads. Few travelers bothered to detour into town anymore. The independent gas stations, the neon-lit motels, the family-run diners—all began to fade, casualties of a culture that now valued predictability over personality.
In their place emerged a new kind of architecture: efficient, scalable, and utterly forgettable. The built landscape became as uniform as the products it sold. What had once been an expression of regional identity and individual vision was now a patchwork of sameness.
These photographs pay homage to an earlier chapter in our shared story—when buildings told you something about the people who built them, when a structure’s shape or signage might reflect not a corporate brand, but the hopes and hands of a single family. They are fragments of a handmade America, one that still whispered with the spirit of invention and the raw poetry of place.
As I walked among the sun-bleached remains of these towns—amid broken signs, boarded windows, and collapsing roofs—I felt the presence of those early pioneers. The ones who came with big plans and fragile hope. And even now, in the silence and dust, you can sense the optimism that must have hung in the air, when they first sat down with pen and paper and made their plans for the future.
