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Seph Lawless (born 1978) is a pseudonymous American artist, political activist, and photojournalist. He is best known for his photos of urban decay and abandoned spaces across the United States. He is known for his satirical writing and subversive epigrams, which combine dark humor with photojournalism.

Early life
Lawless was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and briefly raised in Detroit, Michigan, before returning to Cleveland, where he resides. His father was a longtime worker at Ford Motor Company; through him, Lawless witnessed the collapse of the once-thriving American auto industry.

Career
In 2012 and 2013, Lawless photographed man-made desolation and other symbols of industrial decline in the Rust Belt and across the rest of the United States. He took approximately 3,000 images and 17 hours of video footage that he used in his 2014 book, Autopsy of America.

A follow-up collection, Black Friday: The Collapse of the American Shopping Mall, contains photos from late 2013 through April 2014, and documents the demise of old symbols of American commercialism, homing in on abandoned, decaying and boarded-up shopping malls. Lawless photographed abandoned malls in Michigan and Ohio, focusing on the abandoned Rolling Acres Mall in Akron, Ohio, built in 1975 and closed in 2008, and the Randall Park Mall in North Randall, Ohio, which had been the world's largest shopping center at the time of its opening in the 1970s, and which closed in 2009.

In 2014, Lawless's photos of abandoned malls were featured in segments on CNNMoney, and he was also interviewed about the photos by Greta Van Susteren on Fox News. Cleveland Magazine named Lawless one of its Most Interesting People 2015. His work has been exhibited internationally in Munich.

In 2014, Lawless released 13: An American Horror Story, with photos from "haunted" buildings in the United States. In 2016, the Huffington Post issued a correction to its 2014 article about Lawless's "haunted buildings" book because of factual errors in Lawless's captions on the photos.

In 2015, Lawless was hired as a freelance journalist by The Guardian newspaper to document the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. In March of 2016 he was announced as an official writer for the Huffington Post.

Lawless has appeared on Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, The Weather Channel, and the New York Daily News.

Works

 * Autopsy of America
 * Black Friday: The Collapse of the American Shopping Mall
 * 13: An American Horror Story
 * The Last Lap: North Wilkesboro Speedway is losing a Race Against Time
 * The Trolley Tragedy of 1957
 * Hauntingly Beautiful
 * Seasons in the Size of Days
 * The Prelude: The Deadliest City in America
 * The Variety Theater: The Night Motörhead Brought Down the House
 * Bizarro: The World's Most Hauntingly Beautiful Abandoned Theme Parks

Controversy
Lawless has been accused, charged and even arrested with trespassing into some places over the years in order to obtain rare photographs. Reported court documents show that detectives seized Lawless' personal emails from his Facebook fan page which were used against him by the prosecution. In 2016, Lawless trespassed into secured sections of Disney World and photographed two abandoned areas of Disney World. The photos went viral and within hours the media reported that Lawless was banned from Disney World for life.