The Promise

These images are part of an ongoing project focusing on the New Jersey shore town of Atlantic City. The series is called “The Promise after 40 Years” and represents what has happened to a shore town that took a gamble on casinos. Atlantic City was a fading town when casinos were approved in a referendum on the 1976 election ballot. The first casino opened in 1978, and now, forty years later, the social and economic impact of casino gambling has failed to live up to its promise. Leaving Atlantic City’s residents with a desolate city, with high unemployment and high vacancies. The problems of homelessness and addiction have only increased against the background of architectural behemoths that are internalized money machines.