Abandoned Mexican Restaurant

Unknown by the viewer, Ormerod captures the quiet desolation of an abandoned Mexican restaurant. Paint peeling in the heat of the sun, the decorative cacti on the building's walls merge sadly with the verdant bushes in front.

Omerod's photographs are understated, but show an unseen America, where the industrial heartland is decaying, highways stand empty and towns are deserted. The subjects of Ormerod’s work are the disenfranchised. A teenager cycles through her neighbourhood wearing a Halloween-style hockey mask, a Native American man stands in a graveyard, their expressions are unreadable.

The work subverts traditional American icons. A white picket fence is staved in, a huge billboard for Miss Teen Dakota USA stands next to an empty highway. Inverting the famous Hollywood sign, Ormerod photographs a Texaco sign from the back, dominating the empty, Western landscape.