Raised in a small town in Volusia County, Florida by Californian parents, I have always observed life in the South somewhat as an outsider. It wasn’t until I moved to Washington for college that my attachment and identification with Southern culture became evident.
The South is complicated. It’s a region with a rich, yet hard and sad history. Like the rest of America, it’s always changing but it seems to happen at a pace very different from that of the industrial North or the progressive West. What do the structures and spaces that remain tell us about a time past?
The following photos are a chapter in an ongoing series that began after I left the South. They were taken at a citrus plant located in Volusia County, Florida. For nearly 100 years, this property was a site for packing and shipping Florida citrus, until a destructive freeze destroyed the attached grove and rendered the business inviable.
The property has been vacant for over 30 years.
