Ibai Rigby

Downtown America

What can street photography be when the street is no more? The rise of private automobile transportation following WWII brought as a consequence the death of the pedestrian street. Most central areas of American cities and their bustling sidewalks, as portrayed by photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz or Walker Evans, were isolated from the rest through elevated belt highways and loops in a matter of few years, acting as fortifications to defend what would become the Central Business Districts the ever since expanding urban poor. This series of images, taken in different cities of the United States, portray an urban landscape devoid of life as seen from the parking lots which one crosses on its way from the car straight into the office; the little that has been left from the experience of being in the street.