‘USA: The Road (East Coast)

A rust belt pilgrimage through faded power, forgotten towns, and the poetry of decline. USA: The Road (East Coast) was born from a lifelong ambition, to see the backbone of a superpower not through its monuments, but through what’s been left behind. Shot at the very start of my photography journey, this series explores the towns, truck stops, rail lines, and shuttered storefronts that mark the post-industrial corridor of the American Northeast and Midwest.

Influenced by a fascination with the fall of empires and the visual legacy of working-class America, the project captures a quiet, dignified decay. These are not tourist images. They are observations from the road: freight cars waiting in the cold, murals peeling under overcast skies, steel bridges leading to nowhere in particular. This series was my way of understanding place, politics, and power through texture and silence. It’s a meditation on what remains when prosperity moves on—and what kind of stories still live in the ruins.