Edgar Martins was initially commissioned by The New York Timesto photograph the fallout from the US subprime mortgage crisis. Extending the project, he photographed across the United States in eight separate states and across sixteen different locations. These carefully researched sites exposed the extent and impact of the crisis on the US construction industry. Approaching the project as a photographic intervention into a crisis, the resulting images go beyond pure formal investigation or documentation. His interest is in summoning a disquieting conjunction of realism and fiction--"cutting in to the real."