2020 was for most of us a traumatic year of pandemic and protest culminating in the defeat of Donald Trump in November. Directly after election day, we waited nervously for the media to make the call for Joe Biden. Rudy Giuliani held a press conference in Philadelphia at the Four Seasons – it turned out not to be the hotel in Center City – but rather Four Seasons Total Landscaping in a forlorn part of northeast Philly. In the middle of the press conference in which he and Trump spokesperson Corey Lewandowski made unproven charges of fraud, the Associated Press called the election for Biden. Chaos and much hilarity followed.

Many of the reporters dashed off while others decided to visit the immediate area, which included a crematorium and a sex shop called Fantasy Island.

I knew immediately that I needed to go to Philadelphia and photograph the landscape surrounding Four Seasons Total Landscaping. So, I rented a car, dragged my 22-year-old son along as bodyguard, and drove down, about 2 hours away from New York. The day was beautiful, the environment stunningly rich. At least rich to me. Wedged between Interstate 95 and the Amtrak Northeast Corridor tracks, it’s an area full of chop shops, small factories, warehouses, a scattering of houses, and a superfund site. Tall billboards punctuated the sky adjacent to I-95, and a Sunoco logo with an insistent arrow pointing down as if intentionally saying this is the place.

I’ve put the pictures up on my website, and everyone is invited to enjoy this strange landscape, a portrait of America’s underside, often glimpsed only from a train window. I am considering doing a book as well.  Four Seasons Total Landscaping