In summer 1980, Lisa Barlow was rounding a bend on Connecticut's Route 69 in a battered rental car when she encountered a giant cross towering above the road.
 
She had heard of Holy Land U.S.A. but had never seen its painstaking miniature Jerusalem, with biblical scenes, teachings and quotations embedded in cement. There was Pilate's house, an inn with a "No Vacancy" sign, a mummified lump sprayed white to represent Lot's wife turned to salt, and a repentant-looking Lucifer in a small dog cage. Built twenty years earlier from concrete, plaster, wire and wood, the diorama had received makeshift repairs with plastic and aluminium siding. The Stairway to Heaven—cracked asphalt steps climbing the hill—had a chain-link fence along one side, and thick vines concealed Eden beneath a tin parasol. From there, Barlow first saw Waterbury below, its church towers and factory chimneys strangely juxtaposed with Holy Land's foot-high buildings at her feet.
 
"Before long, more than fascination with Holy Land drew me back to Waterbury. Its people captured my attention, imagination and eventually my love. This is the story of that year in pictures." —Lisa Barlow
 
Barlow's images of Waterbury and its distinctively American idiosyncrasies combine rare empathy with a visual complexity that unfolds on every viewing.
 
"These images affect me in ways photographs rarely do: they seem truly to move, speak and breathe. There is music in them, songs and stories rising from them unbidden." —Brad Zeller