VERGARA, CAMILO JOSE. American Ruins. 224 pp., 288 color photographs. 4to, cloth. New York, The Monacelli Press, 2004.
This photographer and sociologist has spent years documenting the deterioration of the American inner city, specifically in New York, Newark, Camden, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Gary, Detroit, and Los Angeles. The books serve both as a critique of civic indifference and as a meditation on the aesthetic impact of desolate and neglected buildings.