Δ Light Readings : 017 - The Haunting of Verdant Valley
the book is here!
Last week, I drove to Clifton, New Jersey, home of Conveyor Studio to pick up the book I’ve been working on since March of 2023.
A photo book gives images a home—something tangible and deliberate. All is accounted for, all is considered—the way the paper feels as you flip through the pages, the choice of fonts that are additive but not attention-seeking, the order of images, and, my personal hill to die on—a binding stitched and glued so the book can lay flat.
I’m exceptionally proud to share with you my new book about Silicon Valley, The Haunting of Verdant Valley.
“… the series of plagues visited upon California in the second half of the nineteenth century took the form of men, and we can see the character of the tendencies that shaped the state (and in turn, the world) reflected in the men seized by them.” - Malcolm Harris, Palo Alto
Last year, I made a series of trips to Silicon Valley, a place I’d never photographed, to try to understand what this place meant today.
For four years in college, I wrote code, I dreamed in C++, tracing a path that seemed destined to lead me someplace like this. But I didn’t end up in Silicon Valley, at least not as a software developer. Instead, I’ve spent days photographing these campuses, in startups, in quiet neighborhoods and at sites marked by a small plaque denoted something that happened here that actually changed our whole world. I read historical accounts, including the stories of the Native tribes forced from this land. And it’s not an abstraction when the man who ordered their eradication went on to found a university that transformed this verdant valley—once home to thousands of acres of fruit orchards—into buildings where men would lay the foundations of our modern world.
I made these photographs before a line of tech CEOs stood, shoulder to shoulder, in the U.S. Capitol as President Trump took his oath of office—a moment that seemed to mark a turning point for Silicon Valley. The idealism that once fueled its pioneers had long since been eclipsed by something bigger, more pragmatic and purely capitalistic. The Haunting of Verdant Valley explores this evolution, capturing the tension between what Silicon Valley aspired to be and what it has become.
I had the privilege of working with incredible designers and the wonderful aforementioned Conveyor Studios. I’ll have lots more to say about the book over the coming weeks, but I wanted Light Readings readers to hear about it first.
You can see more photos of the book and purchase it here.
Thank you,
Stephen