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Wherever one goes everything looks more and more the same. All across the world a uniform, homogeneous model of development, inspired by Los Angeles style urban sprawl, consisting of massive freeways, parking lots, shopping malls and large scale master planned communities with golf courses, is being stamped onto the earth's topography.

It is the same process everywhere. First the ground is broken, hills are remolded, rivers re-routed and trees are removed, erasing centuries of natural growth and cultivation. The ground is then covered with asphalt for roads to give access and order to the construction site. Towards the end of construction, the rest of the land is subsequently covered with irrigation systems, lawns and decorative trees. A wall surrounds the site to obscure it from those driving past on the adjacent freeway. The lifeblood and core of this model of development are the car and the freeway. Without these, the system would collapse.

People flee the cities looking for tranquility, freedom and their dreamhouse for a lower price. Everyone who buys their A, B, C or D model tract home wants to be on the edge of urban sprawl, yet the edge keeps creeping outward. The problems of the city also seep outward into urban sprawl: traffic jams, gridlock, pollution, crime and lack of natural spaces. As we have seen in recent history, fervent overdevelopment has led to crises, not only financial, but also environmental and social and some even say psychological. How does this uniform, anonymous architecture - the anonimization of the landscape - affect the culture, and environment of the region onto which it is implanted? Does this uniform method of urban planning lead to alienation?

This photography project began in Los Angeles County and has since expanded to Las Vegas, Spain, France, Germany, Greece, Dubai, and South Korea.

The land is in a constant state of flux, being competed for by colonizing species of vegetation, or “weeds”, and developers’ bulldozers and cranes, all of whom are just trying to survive. “Desert Real Estate” portrays how the desert terrain of Southern California and Nevada is being rapidly flattened and terraced to make way for enormous plots of tract houses, essentially new “planned communities” with green lawns and golf courses for the ever-expanding populations of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. In order for these new “communities” to able to function, massive infrastructure projects, such as freeways must be built, electric and telephone lines must be laid, and the most scarce commodity in the desert, water, must be supplied.

The images of the land seen as a commodity are juxtaposed with images of desert wastelands that most people drive past at 80 mph, which are used as dumping grounds by many. The only areas of the desert landscape which seem to be revered as “nature”, are national parks which are seen as patriotic, almost spiritual landscapes that are to be treated with utmost respect. The yet “untouched” landscape is rapidly diminishing to economic, political and cultural forces of the time.

The advent of mass coastal tourism was in Spain in the 1960’s, in a time when the Franco government badly needed money and when people in the north of Europe had more income and vacation time than ever before. New touristic complexes were rapidly and cheaply built on Spain’s warm Mediterranean coast. The architecture consisted of anonymous concrete blocks, devoid of any Spanish origins, in order to make the predominantly British and German tourists feel as much at home as possible in a much more pleasant climate. In surveys tourists say they come to Spain for the sun, the beaches and the low prices, but not for the culture. Do beach resorts have their own unique culture and architecture?

Today there is a second construction boom on the Spanish coast consisting of large urbanizations with golf courses, meant mainly for British, Germans and other northern Europeans for retirement. With it come the problems of not having enough water in this sunniest, and thus most arid region of Europe, as well as problems of congestion and the disappearance of what little “untouched nature” remains. Will this continued development destroy the very nature that attracts tourists to the coast? Can tourist income be weighed against the value of nature? Is the Mediterranean coast of Spain still Spanish?

(New project - work in progress.)
Every hour in Spain, 2 hectares of land are urbanized. Spain is undergoing a construction boom which is transforming the landscape, environment, culture, society and economy at a frenetic pace. Madrid is one of the areas most affected by this boom, where on its outskirts, housing is to be built for 1.5 million people.

It seems that the phenomenon of urban sprawl has been imported from the United States to Spain. Madrid is becoming more and more like Los Angeles, with people spending increasingly more time in their cars to reach their homes which are being built progressively further away from the city center where the land is cheaper. It used to be that cities were built where there was a river or a coast, but now it is the freeway which has become the catalyst for real estate development. First the M-30 ring road freeway was built to circumnavigate Madrid and then the M-40, and now the M-50 is almost finished. There are future plans for an M-60 and M-70.

The M-50 is the current boundary between nature and civilization – on the outside of the ring road there are still farm fields and on the inside are sprouting new developments with shopping malls. In this project I plan to photograph the freeway and everything that grows with it – primarily urbanizations, master planned communities and shopping malls.

The primary objective of the project is to create awareness of the rapid loss of landscape and of a way of life. Every hour 45 hectares of land are being urbanized in Spain. The changes caused by this are irreversible.

Germany has a highly developed network of over 750 rest areas having gas stations, WCs, restaurants, playgrounds and often hotels. Rest areas are autonomous islands “in-between”, where people are in transit, much like train stations or airports. They are anonymous spaces built for efficiency yet at the same time try to have a touch of home where drivers and their children can regain energy to continue their journeys. Rest areas are vital for sustaining vehicles, their drivers, and the efficient functioning of the freeway system and the economy.

Brown coal mining was one of the largest industries in former communist East Germany, with a long tradition, making the country self-sufficient in energy production. With the fall of the Wall came the beginning of the end of the industry, with tens of thousands of people losing their jobs. Most mines were abandoned and slowly the ground water, which had been pumped out over years, is being allowed to seep back in to eventually create a landscape of artificial lakes.

The mining industry offered much employment and gave people a warm home yet many people lost their homes as well. In addition to the tremendous environmental damage, the biggest emotional, cultural and historical cost was for those 1000’s of residents who had to give up their homes as countless towns had to be bulldozed away in past decades to make way for mining.

Currently the brown coal mining industry is trying to revive itself and is looking for new mining areas. With this towns are again threatened to be destroyed such as 750 year old Heuersdorf in Saxony. (RHP’s film – “Coal, Earth, Home”).

When a train leaves or enters the station in China, the train attendants inside the train each stand straight like soldiers behind their respective doors, looking out at their fellow employees on the platform who are standing the same way facing them. This ritual is out of mutual respect and out of respect for the train. “Peace”, “Anti-Imperialism”, “Progress”, and “Freedom” are some of the names of Chinese steam locomotives, which demonstrate how integral the railroad system is to the Chinese culture and economy. 1.4 million people work in the Chinese National Railways, which has the highest build-out rate in the world. By 2010 enough track will have been laid in China to circle the globe twice. The advertising for the Chinese Railway Museum mentions “...the building of railway spiritual civilization.” The Chinese Railway is a world unto itself with its own rhythm, codes and life.

One can meet all strata of Chinese society on the same train, from high-ranking businessmen in soft sleeper (1st class) to migrant construction workers in hard seat (4th class) with a standing ticket. To make the often more than 30 hour long journeys safe and more pleasant, there is a large crew of train attendants, technicians, engineers, police officers, cooks, waitresses, and an announcer-DJ, serving the passengers.