Long-Form Projects

Things Left in a Parking Lot, San Diego (2018-Current) • A few people linger around the edge of the strip mall, smoking cigarettes while waiting for the casino bus. I walk past them and up a short dirt incline between scrappy bushes to enter the nearly empty parking lot. An old man from the sprawling Korean market slowly collects shopping carts left in a myriad of places and positions. I begin wandering along the rows of parking spaces while seagulls fly quietly above, sometimes gliding down to pick at leftover food containers. If I happen to catch the old man’s attention we will wave hello from our unique trajectories around the parking lot. Things Left in a Parking Lot - is an ongoing series which documents what has been left in a single strip mall lot from the days and nights before. Parking lots are a ubiquitous feature of Southern California’s densely populated landscape, where we temporarily store the machines so weaved into our existence here.They are created by suffocating the nature below and transforming the land into a space of ceaseless transience. Within the flux of this environment, fragments of life often spill onto the asphalt, where they reside temporarily before being blown, swept, crushed or carried away. What intrigues me is how the objects interact with the environment and the unknown stories surrounding their temporary presence.