The sequel to NAFTA Stories Part 1 is now posted in the series section of this website. Of the many photos of Galesburg, Illinois—available at naftastories.org—I chose mainly to focus on a particular set for this website. Shooting the series, I became aware of a sense of vacancy amidst the town. With so many extremely large empty spaces, a more abstract impression of emptiness permeates Galesburg. After losing a steady engrained brand of work, its residents have moved on—a tough task—but, to the newcomer, it’s a cave to be explored.

The next installment of images and information from the NAFTA Stories project is coming soon. Part 2 will contain photographs from Galesburg, Illinois. Like the photographs in Part 1, the subject matter will vary dramatically from portraits of interviewees to sweeping patched together panoramic views. Please check back in the upcoming weeks.

During recent field research, a colleague and I entered (or, rather, crept into) a shutdown factory on the premise that it was related to research—visual in my case, sociological in my colleague's. The NAFTA Stories project took on a new dimension for me, as I entered into the old Maytag factory—just a skeleton of a factory now—whose jobs had been lost years ago, and whose declining overall importance seemed emblematic of a larger shift in work in the United States. The air was still and old, smelling vaguely of pigeon shit and machinery. The concrete floors displayed, by way of grimy discoloration and disjoined bolts, the edges of where massive machines had sat for years. Since the factory's closure, they'd been auctioned off and removed.