The Number One City in America
By Billy Hunt
4 Apr 2007
They are bulldozing the hill behind my house. Ten acres of trees, shrubs, and weeds: gone. Hawks, foxes, deer, and groundhogs: all gone. Our neighborhood fought this new subdivision for over a year, anticipating gentrification, traffic complications, and environmental degradation. But we lost, and now the sounds of bulldozers and backhoes, punctuated by an occasional dynamite blast, fill our days.
In this series of photographs, "The Number One City in America", I wanted to document the recent boom in housing that is transforming neighborhoods like mine. Previously untenable tracts of land are being transformed aggressively and irrevocably. Wild, unclaimed spaces are made into rows of cookie-cutter "McMansions," with no regard for neighborhood character, environmental impact, or even land topology.
Each of us passes by construction sites daily, but we rarely see them. In this body of work, I set out to see these transitional areas: the displaced objects, the barren land. I photographed these landscapes using long exposures at twilight to enhance the desolate feeling. My aim is to explore this new type of development and to provoke a discussion about its effects on the quality of life of our community.
