Edgar Martins was commissioned by The New York Times Magazine to explore the United States’ subprime mortgage industry collapse and its impact on the real estate market.

In a study that goes beyond pure formal investigation and factual documentation, Martins, a photographic artist, decided to tackle the project from the outset and to use it to explore new models for conceptualizing a hotly contemporary phenomenon and landscape, outside of the photojournalistic canon.

Martins set out to photograph abandoned homes, golf courses, ski resorts, hotels and other building projects in sixteen locations, across six federal states, choosing carefully researched locations in their widest latitude, to expose the full extent and impact of this crisis.

When the work was finally published in the summer of 2009, it became the focus of a heated debate (now a reference discussion among artistic and photographic circles) as the result of Martins’ decision to digitally reshape some of the images.

The series has since reached a wide audience in the form of a book (published by Dewi Lewis, 2011).