The dust bowl era
In 2012, I had paid medical leave from my employment. Granted, I should have been resting up from my minor surgery. However, driving my car and lifting my camera wouldn’t stress my condition. So, I took a road trip to explore the ghost towns of North and South Dakota. I found many towns with very small posted populations. For example, Danzig, North Dakota, boasted a population of only four.
I spent twelve days and nights on the road in the Dakotas, driving from one small ghost town to the next. There’s an astonishing number of these forgotten settlements scattered across North and South Dakota. However, photographing multiple towns presented one major challenge: the vast distances between them. I often found myself driving for hours to reach a single ghost town and document its remaining structures. The journey itself became a significant part of capturing these images.
