In the summer of 2018, a tornado ripped through the Metro East St. Louis region leaving a twisted and beautiful form in its aftermath. Within an array of four radio towers—each standing 445.5 feet in the air, one toppled. With its fall, the energy that once coursed through this tower was released, transforming the upright steel structure into an open shell. The structure sat in an open field—sinking into the earth, anticipating a future of ruin.

Despite its enormous weight and stretch, the radio tower and its surrounding environment went all but unnoticed. The mass of collapsed steel lay exposed—as vulnerable as a fallen beast.

This site, flanked by an auto salvage yard and the region’s largest landfill, is sandwiched between the Gateway Motorsport Track and the Granite City Steel Plant. The human-made tower that embodied the force of steel and the transmission of invisible radio waves, was literally being swallowed by the earth. As the tower sank into the ground, it became part of that field and joined the arc and form of its surrounding landscape.

My creative process often involves regular and repeated visits to places in transition. I photographed this fallen radio tower for a year and a half, observing the changes to the structure and its relationship to the landscape. This passage of time and my return to a single place provided an important marker—a cycle through seasons, experiences of weather, and a meditation on the creative process.

The presence of this fallen radio tower in the farmer’s field was as poetic as it was dangerous; its damaged form expressed both pathos and horror. To be physically in front of this massive structure was to feel the precariousness of our future- a future in which climate change and unpredictability literally shift the ground upon which we stand.