It's a Grundy County Thing

"It’s a Grundy County Thing" is a series of photographs documenting the collapse of small-town Trenton, Missouri. What once used to be a charming place is now only filled with senior citizens and drug addicts…and my family. Anybody who wanted a life for themselves is long gone, and the only people left over are the ones clinging onto what the town used to be.

Each building holds a story—each home a whisper of a life once lived. We drive through, and my mom points out where she hung out after school, the HyVee she worked at, the church she went to every Sunday with Grandma Teeny. It’s a skeleton town, once so full of life and aspirations and now only left with rotting bones and a kernel of spirit.

But it’s not the bones that make a community, it’s the people—the spirit. With everything crumbling around them, there is still hope shining through. Because maybe one day, Trenton will transform back into what it once was.