Troy Paiva is a commercial artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. For his entire adult life he has been an abandonment explorer and back-roads wanderer, especially at night. Sneaking around in junkyards and dead roadside towns, he was doing Urban-Exploration, years before the term even existed.
Perfecting his night photography and light painting techniques in these locations since 1989, he started the wildly popular lostamerica.com website in 1998. In 2003 Motorbooks International published Troy’s first book “Lost America” to worldwide acclaim. Summer 2008 will see the release of his second book “Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration” by Chronicle Books.
For the past few years Troy has concentrated on shooting junkyards, decommissioned military bases and other abandoned California locations.