Waiting for the End of the World

Photographer Richard Ross chronicles a true underground movement in Waiting for the End of the World, a photo journal of bomb shelters around the world. Included in his book is the Greenbriar Hotel in West Virginia, which fosters a shelter large enough for the entire United States Congress and an entire underground city in Beijing, China that is capable of housing 350,000 people.

Man's construction of underground shelters for refuge in the face of catastrophe is not a recent trend. One of the photo spreads in the book is of Hittite shelters in Turkey that were built 4,000 years ago. The photos are accompanied by an interview with the photographer that was conducted by Sarah Vowell, as well as the photographer's own notes on each locale.

In the interview, he explains the shelter beneath the Greenbriar Hotel could hold 1,800 people, was stocked with alcohol and featured a large photomural of the Capitol, allowing a representative to be filmed in front of the 'Capitol' while addressing the nation. This way, citizens would think all was normal. Built during the Eisenhower administration, the shelter has served as a tourist attraction since 1992, when it was revealed by the Washington Post.

Ross also discloses in the interview that his goal in assembling the collection was to reveal the hidden, 'by changing the status of these structures from covert to overt,' while putting 'the images of people's fears into visual representation