When Donald Trump was elected in November 2016, I knew immediately that I needed to do something as an artist and photographer. A few days later, I drove down to Atlantic City on a hunch that this place, the epitome of Trumpian dystopia, would serve as a metaphor for the overall state of affairs in the United States.
I started by photographing Trump's failed casinos and then moved to the ravaged neighborhoods adjacent to these architectural behemoths. Rather than saving a faded Atlantic City, the casinos have sucked the life-blood out of its veins and enriched grifters like Donald Trump. The result is Atlantic City, a book about a city – and a country – teetering on the edge.
I made the drive down the Garden State Parkway to Atlantic City. It was a grey, damp, December day — chilly, but tolerable. The closure of Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza have sent this already depressed city reeling. And now Trump was President. Is Atlantic City emblematic of what is happening to the country as a whole?
Last year, he sued to force the shuttered Trump Plaza to remove every reference to his name, a final pronouncement on his view of Atlantic City. The letters were removed, some carted off in a contractor’s pickup truck.
Politico
By Amy S. Rosenberg
May 30, 2016
The closure of the sprawling Boardwalk casino, with its soaring domes, minarets and towers built to mimic the famed Indian historic site, cost nearly 3,000 workers their jobs, bringing the total jobs lost by Atlantic City casino closings to 11,000 since 2014.
Associated Press
Wayne Parry
Oct. 10, 2016
As for MacLeod, the sculptor of the elephants outside the Taj, he says his anger over the episode has faded, and he can joke now about how he once got stiffed by a famous billionaire.
Giving a slide presentation of his work to an architectural firm two days after Trump swept the New York Republican primary in April, he slipped in two photos — one showing one of the elephants, the other showing Trump’s name on the casino marquee in red lights.
“This guy never paid me,” MacLeod deadpanned. Everyone laughed.
Bernard Condon
June 28, 2016
Associated Press
Going home to visit is a disorienting experience these days. It’s always been necessary to drive past rundown bungalows and housing projects to get to the boardwalk. There used to be a kind of promise that the casino industry would provide opportunities that would trickle down and reinvigorate those communities; they never did. Now you go past boarded-up single-family homes to arrive at once opulent, equally shuttered casino towers and a boardwalk as sparse and silent as the streets.
Arielle Brousse
Oct 3, 2016
Vox
As far back as 1981, Louis Malle said that his film “Atlantic City could be a metaphor for things going wrong all over America.” And recently the New Republic opined that “The closure of Trump Taj Mahal casino is a giant metaphor for Trump’s America.”
The New Republic
Ryu Spaeth
Aug 3, 2016
During Prohibition, Atlantic City created the idea of the speakeasy, which turned into nightclubs and that extraordinary political complexity and corruption coming out of New Jersey at the time. The long hand that they had-and maybe still do-even had to do with presidential elections.
Martin Scorsese
Interview
August 17, 2010
Just in front of the Trump Plaza is a tribute to the Miss America pageant, which began in Atlantic City in 1921, and has been held, frequently, in the nearby Convention Center, now called Boardwalk Hall. Donald Trump never got his hands on Miss America, literally or figuratively — he was the owner of the Miss Universe and USA pageants for over a decade.
When he took over the Miss Universe pageant Trump said, “They had a person that was extremely proud that a number of the women had become doctors, and I wasn’t interested.”
From the Howard Stern Show
Revel, the failed $2.4 billion casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, built as a high-end playground for Wall Street bankers, sold for $200 million to a Colorado developer who plans to reopen it under the name Ocean Resort Casino. The Revel opened in 2012 as the tallest building in the seashore town with Beyoncé as its headliner.
Christopher Palmeri
January 8, 2018
Bloomberg
At my feet in the sand I picked up a cigarette carton with Russian lettering on it. I thought reflexively, The Russians are coming! But the Russians are already here.
(Philipp) Kirkorov, who represented Russia at Eurovision in 1995, first met Trump in 1994 when Kirkorov and his now ex-wife and Russia’s 1997 Eurovision singer Alla Pugacheva performed at the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City.
wiwibloggs.com
September 7, 2016
Robyn Gallagher
I remember one speech he (Trump) gave at a local business luncheon in the spring of 1992, right when I started my job. He told the gathering that Atlantic City needed to “clean up its act” and excoriated officials for funneling money into “unneeded low-income housing” rather than beautifying the entrance to the city “so it won’t look like you’re coming into a slum.”
by Jason Wilson
March 12, 2018
The Washington Post
In January of 2016, after a winter storm flooded parts of the Jersey coastline, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, then a candidate for president, sarcastically asked whether he should “pick up a mop” to help with flooding—a remark that was criticized by environmentalists for being out of touch with the gravity of the situation. Christie accepts that human activity contributes to climate change, but contends that the issue “is not a crisis.”
National Geographic
By Michael Edison Hayden
May 4, 2016
(Reuben) Kramer shows us the shuttered Trump Plaza, which will likely be torn down. It is one of four casinos that closed in 2014, representing a third of Atlantic City’s gaming halls. Trump’s name has been removed from the Trump Plaza facade. Only the gaudy golden crest, a color reminiscent of Trump’s famous hair, remains.
Matt Katz
Aug 26, 2015
WNYC News
“Trump Taj Mahal received many warnings about its deficiencies,” said FinCEN Director Jennifer Shaky Calvery. “Like all casinos in this country, Trump Taj Mahal has a duty to help protect our financial system from being exploited by criminals, terrorists, and other bad actors. Far from meeting these expectation, poor compliance practices, over many years, left the casino and our financial system unacceptably exposed.”
FinCEN Press Release
(Financial Crimes Enforcement Network)
Down at the Boardwalk’s terminus, by Oriental Avenue, by night, the seagulls keep flying into the Revel and dying. Or they flap and limp around a bit before dying. You never see or hear the impact, you just get what happens after. Immense white gulls, flapping, limping, expiring. They fly into the Revel’s giant vacant tower of panes and break their necks, because without any lights on, the glass is indistinguishable from the sky.
Joshua Cohen, n+1 Magazine
Casinos were the perfect solution for generating cash and for enhancing Trump’s reputation as a playboy billionaire. Somehow, however, Trump could not make money on his casinos – at least not in the conventional sense of turning a profit. He went bankrupt five times in Atlantic City. The banks stopped loaning him money. At the heart of everything from Atlantic City to the presidency: where did Trump’s money come from?
Brian Rose