The S.S. United States was launched in 1952 as the fastest ocean liner in the world, crossing the Atlantic on her maiden voyage in record time and carrying presidents, celebrities, immigrants and other passengers during seventeen years of service. Retired in 1969 as jet travel transformed transatlantic transportation, she passed through a series of owners and spent nearly three decades docked in Philadelphia while repeated plans for restoration failed. In 2025 she was towed to Mobile, Alabama, where she was prepared for a final transformation: she is to be sunk off the Florida Gulf Coast as the world’s largest artificial reef and a destination for divers.

I first photographed the S.S. United States in Philadelphia in 1999 and kept returning for more than twenty-five years. My grandparents had sailed on the ship, and I later began rephotographing places shown in family photographs and old advertisements. Research also made me notice things I had photographed without understanding them, including parallel corridors and locked gates that reflected the ship’s rigid class system.