The focus of much of my work for the past 15 years has been photographing at-risk landscapes. Many of these places are threatened, or have already been altered by sprawl and super-malls, military activity, diverted resources, energy exploration and a changing climate.

Over the years as I've traveled throughout the U.S., I've seen greatly increasing numbers of people living at subsistence levels. The ranks of lone drifters have been joined by the unexpected arrival of a 50 year old teacher living in her car, an Ivy League graduate sleeping in a box and a 75 year old widow living with her cat in the back of a pickup truck. People were coping with survival in a new reality.

Haphazard communities have evolved in remote areas where there is no electricity or water. Some of these people were defiant while others were resolved, but what they had in common was that all were living on the fringes of society. Home for most was an abandoned car, a dilapidated camper or some primitive shelter constructed from scrap. Mud & straw were used in a futile attempt to insulate the flimsy cardboard and tarp walls.

While living amongst a group of families in the desert, I came across an odd pile of clothing which had been beaten for years by the relentless climate. There is a hidden beauty in many things, and the pile of abandoned clothing attracted me at first by its palette and form, and by its odd 2-dimensionality.

Then I met the man who lived beneath it.

His shelter was a hole in the ground, roofed with tin and supported by an abandoned refrigerator. He scavenged for discarded clothing that became thatch for the roof to repel the scorching summer sun and to insulate against the frigid winter nights.

This weather beaten pile of clothing became an inventory of human existence.