Randy Fox

In the summer of '77, I was 13 years of age and living with my mother and older sister in Charlotte, NC. We wouldn't be in Charlotte for long; it was another stop on the never-ending quest for "home." My father had passed away a couple of years prior, so...

Over the years, Brownsville, PA has become somewhat of a legendary destination for those who document the rise and fall of the Rust Belt. Brownsville was a major railroad yard and coking center up through the first half of the 20th century, with its population peaking in 1940 at around...

Beginning with "The Deer Hunter" in 1978 and probably wrapping up with "Reckless" in 1984, there was a small steel valley chic trend in cinema. Maybe the still-recent decline of the American factory town was fresh enough to resonate with the larger population and Hollywood. Of course, it didn't last...

I had big plans for the last few days of this past week: A middle of the night departure that would take me through Central Pennsylvania coal country on Friday; a stop to cover the urban sadness of Newburgh, NY and an artist reception for the Fabricated exhibition at the...

Two City Men, Detroit, Michigan

For someone based out of the Pittsburgh area, my articles have been a little Detroit-centric lately. But Detroit and its history can't help but be a permanent and major part of the Rust Belt's rise and fall. Photographer...

Older American automobiles have come to mean many things: celebrations of style and American ingenuity or a reminder of a time when the auto wasn't made with the concern for superior MPG. Styles varied enough that your individual taste could be truly represented by the make and model you ended...

Photographer Jeff Brouws, whose book, Approaching Nowhere, has been a touchstone for photographers and those interested in the New Topographics Movement, has been photographing and studying the plight of America's inner cities for the past 15 years. Brouws' inner-city images acutely document the economic, social and...

United Christian Full Gospel, Detroit, MI

In many of the struggling inner cities of the Rust Belt, the make-shift storefront church is a common sight. In the decaying, desperate and fading old business districts of former economic powerhouses like Buffalo, Detroit and Cleveland,...

Though I have photographed the area many times, I still get a deep-in-the-gut sadness when pulling into Braddock, Pennsylvania. Like many of the satellite mill towns around Pittsburgh, Braddock was once a thriving, bustling and largely middle-class town. And like those towns -- Clairton, McKeesport and Homestead, for example --...

We've all seen the transformation of the American landscape over these last decades. Of course, not only has the lay of our land changed, so have we. In the old factory cities of the Rust Belt, which were home to so many working-class and proud family units; in the Midwest,...

In the mid-80s, I was in a band called the Congo Eels. We called ourselves a "garage-soul" band and had a record out on the Jim's Records label (owned by Jim Spitznagel, who ran Pittsburgh's finest record store, Jim's Records). Our record was getting played every Friday night...

I recently spoke with photographer David Plowden from his home outside of Chicago. He was generous enough to spend a good portion of an afternoon talking about his life and his art. The full transcript of the interview, along with more examples of his wonderful work, can be found at...

As a photographer, laundromats have always been an object of fascination for me. Many have the look of worn time machines, definitely attached to a bygone era but beaten down by the passing years.

The first thing I usually look for are the utilitarian yet almost modern art-like laundromat chairs....

"Well my daddy worked the furnaces
Kept 'em hotter than hell
I come home from 'Nam worked my way to scarfer
A job that'd suit the devil as well
Taconite coke and limestone
Fed my children and make my pay
Them smokestacks reachin' like...

As a photographer and writer, documenting the Rust Belt is a bit akin to a sad dream. While it's true that the material for such an obsession can seem endless, there's a brutal truth that comes from spending so much time wading through the ruins of what, at one time,...