What Once Is:
A Portrait of Cleveland, Ohio
They say that to know a place, one must know its people. But what becomes of that idea when the place we seek to understand has been emptied of them? In Cleveland, Ohio—a city whose population fell from nearly one million in the 1950s to roughly 365,000 in 2026—those who once bore witness to its story are largely gone. Unlike most major American cities, this population loss has not been offset by an influx of newcomers. What remains are buildings, houses, storefronts, and vacant lots that have outlived the generations they once held, standing as the last witnesses to those lives now absent.
This project looks away from the people of Cleveland and toward its facades, streetscapes, and structures, treating them not as remnants or ruins but as records, allowing the inanimate forms to speak. These exteriors hold onto memory, absorb neglect, and speak in the language of erasure; though Cleveland has undergone profound change, these structures suggest that although decline buries what came before it, it is not erased, reminding us that “what once was, still is”.
