In 1973, artist John Divola began the first of three highly ambitious bodies of work that form this publication. The Vandalism series comprises black-and-white photographs of abandoned houses. Entering illegally, Divola spray painted dots, lines, and grids, creating a series of conceptual gestures that referenced "action painting" and the graffiti that was fast becoming a cultural phenomenon. In Los Angeles International Airport Noise Abatement series, he photographed a condemned neighborhood bought out by the airport to serve as a noise buffer for new runways. Here he recorded evidence of violent entries by long-departed vandals: shattered windows, doors torn from hinges, a crowbar resting in the jamb of a door pried open. The final installment, the Zuma series, is the artist's documentation of the destruction of an abandoned beachfront property. These images juxtapose romantic skies and sunsets with a seaside structure that, frame by frame, deteriorates into ruin. Divola's art shares a tradition with conceptual artists such as Bruce Nauman, whose photographs are considered to be performance, and Robert Smithson, who used photography to investigate the built environment.