Living and working in downtown St. Louis for over 17 years has provided me with a rare opportunity to witness and document a city struggling to transition from blighted to thriving. Creating art in this urban landscape has evolved from a process of recording daily activities to exploring an emerging public personality. As a resident and artist, the ordinary, forgotten, and discarded have become the vocabulary of my imagery. The spaces and environments that I photograph are not created entirely by us but exist in spite of us.