Alleys & Ruins Press Kit

Alleys & Ruins

In 1987, I walked into a job interview and my brain snapped.

Regular life became terrifying, but wandering dangerous alleys and abandoned ruins at night calmed my system.

So I kept going back, with a camera – for 25 years, over 1,200 nights.

Alleys & Ruins – a photographic memoir
300 pages · 240 photographs · 8.5 × 11 hardcover
Gypsy Press · September 2026 · Limited first edition of 1,000 copies

Advance Reader Copy

Press & Review Information

Anchor 1

studio sale

Alleys & Ruins no. 151, Razor
Philadelphia, 2017. 10:00 pm, 35-min exposure

“Masterpiece” - The New York Times

“You will never see a dark alley the same way again” - PBS

“Vividly surreal representations of some of our most unloved places” - Architect Magazine

“Absolutely fantastic photos… he's moved quite a few people with his art.” - FOX-TV

“He made it his career capturing the perfect shot in dangerous places.” - ABC

“An important work… a unique and powerful piece”

- Dr. Anka Vujanovic, Editor-in-Chief, StressPoints, International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS)

THE STORY

I had guns pointed at me, I was chased by gangs through ruins and dark alleys. And every time, I went back without a second thought, for 25 years, because something in the dark was healing me of the torment I lived with.

In 1987, my nervous system collapsed. Years before Complex PTSD had a name, I accidentally invented my own therapy: exploring the alleys and ruins of my mind by photographing dangerous, forgotten places at night. I didn't know why I couldn't stop. I just knew that with every dark corner I redeemed, a part of my trauma seemed to flutter away.

The paradox that defined my life: I was terrified of a simple conversation but fearless in a Detroit ruin at 2 am. Danger felt safe and safety felt dangerous. And the camera became my witness.

This is a story I had planned to take to my grave.

“A psychologically precise and unusually compelling account of trauma and recovery – and a rare example of creative practice functioning as self-repair”-Dr. Lyssa Menard, Clinical Psychologist, Northwestern University

Strip away the photography and you still have a riveting narrative. Strip away the memoir and you still have one of the most unusual bodies of work in contemporary photography. Together, they create something without a clean precedent.

Same location during the day, 2018

WHY THIS STORY

The paradox. He was afraid of ordinary life, but in the alleys he was fearless.
The secret. He built an acclaimed career – exhibitions, museums, press – on top of a nervous system collapse he hid from everyone.
The accidental therapy. With no diagnosis, he kept returning to environments that matched how he felt — broken, abandoned, threatened — and transformed them with light, retraining his nervous system.
The intergenerational story. His father fled Franco’s Spain, lived on the streets, then endured decades of humiliation in a small steel town in Quebec. The son inherited that life.
The diagnosis that came 35 years late. He saw over a dozen clinicians, but none had the right map. Complex PTSD wasn't in the diagnostic manual. He didn't learn what happened to him until he began writing this book.
The scale. 25 years. 1,200 nights. 30+ cities. 250+ photographs. Exposures up to 90 minutes. All shot on a 50-year-old Hasselblad film camera.

“A redemption story that's more honest and vulnerable than any I've read before”
- Bryan Nyary, PhD, Managing Editor, American Society for Clinical Pathology

He accidentally invented a form of art therapy that was precisely calibrated to his specific injury, and then practiced it with monastic devotion for a quarter century. It worked.

Alleys & Ruins no. 92, Acme Banana Co. Pittsburgh, 2006. 3 am, 90-min exposure

FROM THE BOOK

"A vibrating bar of pure anxiety ran down the center of my torso, from my throat to my stomach."
"I now understand I was returning to environments that matched how I felt inside."
"In every photograph, the subject matter says run and the light says stay."
"I had done to these places exactly what I had done to myself for 35 years: hidden the wreckage behind a surface so convincing that no one thought to look beneath it."
"I had spent my life perfecting the art of being present and invisible."
"The toughest alleys I ever entered weren't in Chicago or Detroit or Brooklyn. They were in my mind, and these pages are what I brought back."
"There was no demon standing there, there was only me. I was the monster."

“Your stories and photos brought me back to my midnight shifts on patrol. You were fast thinking and very smart out there – that's why you stayed alive.”

-Lisa Hale, retired police officer, 18-year veteran, Detroit

The book places 25 years of photographs alongside the story of what drove them, revealing dimensions of the work that the images alone cannot.