Derailed (Work in Progress)

Derailed Derailed is an ongoing, multi-chapter documentary project exploring small town economic decline and the widening wealth gap across the modern American West. It tracks the physical and human scars left behind when macroeconomic shifts, industrial abandonment, and systemic underinvestment move on from communities rooted in traditional labor. Chapter One: Green River As the opening chapter of this broader study, the work in Green River, Utah, documents the quiet friction of rural endurance. Once a thriving industrial and military hub, the town now navigates commercial abandonment and a seasonal economy. Rather than a narrative of despair, these images show the profound dignity, agency, and physical labor of a community refusing to be erased.