Atlantic City- Brian Rose

Photo: Brian Rose

Atlantic City is my favorite photo project (and book) by Brian Rose since The Lost Border, his epic tribute to the Berlin Wall. And there is more than a little correlation between the two in that both served as the doomed, temporary monuments to the ego and deception of those who so desperately sought to subvert the reality that created them. The East German regime ultimately collapsed under its own weight, just as Trump's Atlantic City casinos ultimately folded under their own facade of grandiose fraudulence.  

And it is in the photos themselves that you sense this, even if you knew nothing of the political/economic background that ultimately determined either scenario. In each we see landscapes inexplicably barren, separated, repurposed and eerily juxtaposed with busier, more ornate, real life dioramas. Dramatic and contradictory contrasts in natural landscapes usually portray the cataclysmic occurrences created by nature's wrath and fury, these man made portraits of landforms subject to geopolitical and socioeconomic upheaval leave similar traces of large scale  trauma forced upon the local topography. And while such nuanced visions of contrast and imbalance provide such a visual wonder to behold, they also carry the weight of history, as well as a sadness and remorse most palpable...