When bullying goes too far Calling out photojournalist Seph Lawless and the mainstream media for peddling manure By Neveah Dubrielle April 26, 2019 It’s with mixed emotions that I write this article. There’s a saying that goes: negative publicity is still publicity. In this case I’m optimistic that people will consider all the facts when considering to purchase Seph Lawless authored books. I’m speaking about the “rogue” photographer known as Seph Lawless of course. For the uninformed, here’s an introduction to Seph’s background: His real name is Joseph Melendez (age 41) from Cleveland, Ohio. Melendez rose to fame when in 2012 he decided to jump onto the bandwagon known as ‘urban exploration’. He published a series of books on abandoned malls which the mainstream media swallowed up whole, many of them failing to fact check the details. Melendez has become a globally recognized name for publishing photos of places most of us will never dare travel. In my opinion there’s nothing particularly unique about Melendez’ photography. I’ve been actively photographing forgotten places for several decades and have the photographs to prove it. These shopping malls, while proving an interesting read on America’s economy as a whole, have been photographed many times by people long before Seph Lawless ever set foot into them. Photographers such as Matthew Christopher Murray who publishes under the name, “Abandoned America”. Murray has been enjoying the same hobby since 2001, roughly the same time as Mr. Melendez. There are several other publishers including Henk van Rensbergen, Roman Robroek, and Sylvain Margaine to name just a few. Both Lawless and Murray offer a series of published books on America’s abandoned buildings. While researching Seph Lawless’ books, I was overwhelmed by the poor grammar and couldn’t help but notice that some of the paragraphs were in fact plagiarized from other sources. For example in “Abandoned America: Death of a Nation”, several paragraphs were copied in whole from a blog published by Jason Kottge (1). Personal critique aside, what prompted my interest in Lawless was that I couldn’t help but notice that social media was being used as a weapon to target authors and photographers who disagreed with Mr. Lawless. When I say weapon, I mean just that: social media pages created to attack the character, physical appearance, and sexual orientation of people who took issue with Mr. Lawless. There’s no concrete indication as to the author of these malicious blogs. I encountered several reviews left by consumers who indicated that 20 blank pages had been inserted into one of Lawless’ books.
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