Greetings from the Salton Sea
Greetings from the Salton Sea is a photo series documenting environmental decay in the Salton Sea, a vast saline lake in the Californian badlands.
Once hailed as “the miracle in the desert,” the Salton Sea was a thriving resort destination in the 1950s, drawing Hollywood celebrities to its beaches and marinas. But decades of agricultural runoff, rising salinity, and recurring algal blooms led to the collapse of its fragile ecosystem. By the early 1960s, mass fish die-offs filled the shoreline with the brittle remains of tilapia, driving away tourism and investment. What remains is a ghostly landscape of abandoned motels, rusting trailers, and skeletal traces of a once-glamorous past.
Today, the Salton Sea stands as a stark symbol of environmental collapse. Blistering heat, toxic dust, and saline degradation have replaced its former promise. “Decay is the future,” one resident told me. And indeed, decay is everywhere—etched in the ruins of what was once imagined as paradise.
