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Photographs by Joshua Lutz
Text by Robert Sullivan
Photography / Environmentalism / New Jersey Studies
Hardcover
15.75 x 12.75 inches
108 pages
50 four-color photographs
ISBN: 978-1-57687-442-4
“Joshua Lutz takes the New Topographics of Adams, Shore,
and Sternfeld into its current era of urban sprawl.”
—The New Yorker
Just two miles west of Manhattan lies the Meadowlands,
a 32-square-mile stretch of sweeping wilderness that
evokes morbid fantasies of Mafia hits and buried remains.
Development has claimed two-thirds of the region, making way
for scores of landfills, motels, and gas stations. The growth of
poorly planned communities and the impending construction
of Xanadu, a five million-square-foot entertainment and retail
complex, threaten to change these lands forever.
Under the pretext of searching for Jimmy Hoffa, photographer
Joshua Lutz began exploring these lonesome wetlands ten
years ago; what started as a strict documentary project
soon evolved into something else entirely. Meadowlands,
Lutz’s first monograph, is a compelling portrait of this vast
and stunning landscape, whose unspoiled area is quickly
dwindling. The Meadowlands are a place of solitude, a place
you pass through on your way somewhere more inviting—and
yet, within it all resides a quiet beauty, a glimmer of hope,
a hidden potential for renewal and rebirth.
Joshua Lutz received his MFA in photography from the
International Center of Photography and Bard College in
2005. In 2004, he received Best Editorial awards from both
Photo District News and Communication Arts, and was also
named one of PDN’s top 30 emerging photographers. His
work has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The
New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, ArtNews, and Time,
and he has exhibited at the Art Directors Club and the
International Center of Photography in New York.
Robert Sullivan is the author of such books as Rats:
Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most
Unwanted Inhabitants and Cross Country: Fifteen Years
and 90,000 Miles on the Roads and
Interstates of America with Lewis and
Clark, a Lot of Bad Motels, a Moving
Van, Emily Post, Jack Kerouac, My
Wife, My Mother-in-Law, Two Kids,
and Enough Coffee to Kill an Elephant
(Bloomsbury, 2004 and 2006).
He was born in New York City and
currently lives in Brooklyn with his
wife and their two children.
