Website sephlawless.com Years active 2005-present | Occupation Photographer Nationality American Name Seph Lawless | |
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Born 1975 (age 40–41) Cleveland, Ohio Books Autopsy of America: The Journal Entries of Seph Lawless Profiles | ||
The Most Dead Mall In America by Seph Lawless
Seph Lawless (born 1978) is a pseudonymous American photographer best known for his photos of urban decay and abandoned spaces across the United States.
Contents
- The Most Dead Mall In America by Seph Lawless
- The creepiest neighborhood in the world by seph lawless
- Early life
- Career
- Works
- Exhibitions
- References
The creepiest neighborhood in the world by seph lawless
Early life
Lawless was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and briefly raised in Detroit, Michigan, before returning to Cleveland, where he resides as of 2014. His father was a longtime worker at Ford Motor Company; through him, Lawless witnessed the collapse of the once-thriving American auto industry.
Career
In 2012 and 2013, Lawless photographed man-made desolation and other symbols of industrial decline in the Rust Belt and across the rest of the United States. He took approximately 3,000 images and 17 hours of video footage that he used in his 2014 book, Autopsy of America.
A follow-up collection, Black Friday: The Collapse of the American Shopping Mall, contains photos from late 2013 through April 2014, and documents the demise of old symbols of American commercialism, homing in on abandoned, decaying and boarded-up shopping malls. Lawless photographed abandoned malls in Michigan and Ohio, focusing on the abandoned Rolling Acres Mall in Akron, Ohio, built in 1975 and closed in 2008, and the Randall Park Mall in North Randall, Ohio, which had been the world's largest shopping center at the time of its opening in the 1970s, and which closed in 2009.
In 2014, Lawless's photos of abandoned malls were featured in segments on CNNMoney, and he was also interviewed about the photos by Greta Van Susteren on Fox News. Cleveland Magazine named Lawless one of its Most Interesting People 2015.
In 2014, Lawless released 13: An American Horror Story, with photos from "haunted" buildings in the United States. In 2016, the Huffington Post issued a correction to its 2014 article about Lawless's "haunted buildings" book because of factual errors in Lawless's captions on the photos.
In 2015, The Guardian newspaper published Lawless' photos documenting the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. In 2015, Lawless released his book, Bizarro: The World's Most Hauntingly Beautiful Abandoned Theme Parks, featuring photographs from 10 abandoned theme parks in the US and Germany.
On September 2, 2016 Lawless appeared on the TV show Abandoned on the Viceland channel, where he talked with host Rick McCrank about his images of abandoned shopping malls. Lawless has been charged with trespassing in relation to his photography. Photographs for his work Black Friday resulted in a police investigation in Cleveland, Ohio, and a misdemeanor trespassing charge.
In March 2016, Lawless claims to have been banned from entering Disney World for after photographing and sharing his images to the press. The story drew attention to an abandoned section of Disney World, in which Lawless challenged Disney World to clean up the neglected property. Lawless was interviewed on the television show Inside Edition where he asserted that Bay Lake, a body of water within Disney World, was creating an environment for alligators to thrive. The interview took place days after a 2-year old boy was attacked and killed by an alligator nearby the abandoned Disney World property.
In 2016, Lawless took photos in Picher, Oklahoma, a toxic abandoned town which the Environmental Protection Agency had mandated to be evacuated in 2006.
In 2017, the Mayor of High River, Alberta accused Lawless of publishing a "sensationalist" article regarding photographs Lawless took in the town. The Mayor further said that photographers like Lawless publish such articles to "try to hurt other people in the process to satisfy their own egos".