The new “ghost towns”

Far from the kind that bring madcap Brady Bunch adventures, the NY Times recently commissioned a series on “the ruins of the second gilded age.”

Since the real estate market began tanking in the US, tales of modern “ghost towns” have buzzed through the media intermittently. Subdivisions and McMansions lay abandoned and often unfinished, a sadly silent illustration of a country full of homes no one can afford to live in.

Portuguese born photographer Edgar Martins said in the piece:

“The sudden shift in the economy unmasked such excess. People are present in these images, but not physically. You trace their action, the destruction they left behind.”

Click here for a slideshow.