TITLE: Midwest

The American Midwest is a land of great beauty, where farmlands and rolling hills give way to wide landscapes and open skies. Photographed under a layer of snow, horizons fade as the distinction blurs between land and sky, and small details of the landscapes jump out against a backdrop of whiteness.

AUTHOR: Mark Coatsworth (United States)

My photography career started in a beer-soaked mosh pit where I shot the underground heavy metal scenes in Vancouver and Toronto starting in 2001.

Over the next ten years I spent much time travelling to abandoned and forgotten parts of North America, from the ghost towns of Atlantic Canada to the post-Katrina ruins of New Orleans to the neglected Inuit communities of the Canadian Arctic. I was drawn in by the bleakness and sadness of these societies, contrasted with the beauty and resilience of their people and natural environments.

In 2014 I moved to Wisconsin, USA where I'm a Computer Science researcher at UW Madison. This is the ideal setting to indulge in my fascination with the American Rust Belt and provide amazing photo opportunities for the years ahead.