Driving home after the night shift the lights of failed businesses began to take on a revised significance. Two-thirds of my co-workers had been laid off in the previous months. The illuminated storefronts seemed more visible at night, glowing and vacant. So I went out and took pictures of them.

The photographs do not embellish decay nor play upon nostalgia. There is no rustic relief to their failure because the failure is not aged. They are contemporary spaces, sprawl that was built fast and gone fast. The subjects are transitory chains of Hechinger's, Aimes, Fresh Mart, three 7-elevens in two miles, merged neighboring banks, electronics and food and clothes, offices. All had gone out of business.

The series was taken in Virginia throughout 2002.