New Jersey's Atlantic City has rarely risen to the ranks of glitz and glamor attributed to other gambling cities. "The difference between Las Vegas and Atlantic City," the comedian Drew Carey said, "is the difference between getting conned by a beautiful call girl and getting mugged by a crack head." 

The photographs recently presented of the city by Brian Rose confirm this identity through an emphasis on the monumental failure of Donald Trump Taj Mahal Casino and other blights in its short history. Of Rose's photograph of the now abandoned building, The Guadian's Thomas Hobbs writes that "[its] exterior look[s] eerily quiet, as if all its workers had left in a sudden hurry, with what was once a thriving casino now unkempt and surrounded by damaged sand dunes."

After photographing the city in 2016, Rose has reflected on its current condition as a metaphor for American development as a whole. “They want to revitalise the area by building more casinos,” says Rose, “which shows there’s no real lesson being learned. There is only so much money to be made in Atlantic City – and the pie isn’t going to get any bigger.”