Subterranean St. Louis: Below Ground and Behind Barriers

St. Louis hides a dense underworld of tunnels, halls, and infrastructures revealing resilient, unseen communities.

St. Louis is a city with a lot going on just below the surface. This sometimes-secret world includes pitch black tunnels and caves, the long, lonely halls of past institutions, and the ruins of former factories. It also includes the hum of industrial activity, the frantic pace of scientific or cultural innovation, and the maze of infrastructure running invisibly beneath it all.
Subterranean St. Louis: Below Ground and Behind Barriers explores what exists just out of view for most of the city’s residents. It is a book that is both a guide and a glimpse into a community whose long history has observed plenty of prosperity and failure (sometimes in seemingly equal measure), though whose self-determination and grit ensures its perpetuation.
St. Louis-native and photographer, Jason Gray, takes the reader below the surface of this intensely interesting city with an extraordinary collection of images spanning more than ten years of work investigating the region’s industrial, cultural, and civic infrastructures.