Moving away from the frantic human struggles of his earlier black-and-white work, Richards turns his lens toward the quiet devastation of rural depopulation in the American West and Midwest. The book documents abandoned farmhouses and forgotten domestic spaces, serving as a melancholic elegy for communities erased by economic hardship and environmental shifts. Rather than capturing active trauma, the project investigates the lingering ghosts of human presence through the artifacts and structures left behind in the dirt.
Moving away from the frantic human struggles of his earlier black-and-white work, Richards turns his lens toward the quiet devastation of rural depopulation in the American West and Midwest. The book documents abandoned farmhouses and forgotten domestic spaces, serving as a melancholic elegy for communities erased by economic hardship and environmental shifts. Rather than capturing active trauma, the project investigates the lingering ghosts of human presence through the artifacts and structures left behind in the dirt.