Cite As
McGrath, Andrew. 2018. "Ruination, Labor, and Aesthetics Across the Inland Empire and High Desert." In Center for Ethnography PECE Instance. Department of Anthropology, University of California at Irvine.
This image was taken at an abandoned munitions bunker in Tustin, California. It was created and included to embody the ways in which vulnerability breeds chaos from sites of rigid structural order. The site in the photo is emblematic of the kinds of places engaged by urban explorers. I made the photo in the spirit of the typical stylized photos circulated on urbex web milieus.
This photo was taken at an abandoned dairy farm in Chino, CA. I used the window of the farmhouse as a foreground frame encasing light saturated hay bales from a still operating farm across the street. Here, I am intimating the viscerality of absence and the entanglements between labor, intimacy, and identity.
California Institution for Men, Chino
Amazon Fulfillment Center site Eastvale, CA 1994/2018
