Still Here: Bombay Beach

Bombay Beach was built around the promise of the Salton Sea. Today, traces of that ambition remain. Still Here explores the quiet persistence of this desert community through photographs of everyday spaces, architecture and the surrounding landscape.

Still Here: Bombay Beach

Bombay Beach, California, was built around the promise of the Salton Sea. During the 1950s and 60s, it was promoted as a thriving desert resort, attracting visitors to its waterfront homes, marinas and holiday businesses. As the lake deteriorated through rising salinity and environmental decline, tourism disappeared and much of that optimism faded.

Today, many of the town’s motels, houses, shops and public spaces remain. Some stand abandoned, while others continue to be lived in and adapted by the people who still call Bombay Beach home. The town exists in a space between past ambition and present reality, where traces of different eras sit alongside everyday life.

Still Here explores this landscape through quiet observations rather than spectacle. The photographs focus on ordinary architecture, overlooked details and familiar streets, considering how places continue to accumulate meaning long after the stories that first defined them have changed.

Rather than presenting Bombay Beach simply as a place of decline, the project reflects on resilience, memory and the persistence of community. It asks what remains when expectations fade, and how everyday places continue to shape the lives of the people who inhabit them.