When architect and photographer Gus Petro visited the United States he saw the juxtaposition of huge spaces and compact spaces. When Petro visited New York he created a photo series called Dense showcasing the verticality and packed-in-ness of Manhattan. Petro then traveled to the American West for his next project, Empty, which featured landscape views of the Grand Canyon and Death Valley, showing vast continuous and unoccupied spaces.
The Switzerland-based artist was stunned by the juxtaposition of density and emptiness in the same country, so he thought about combineing the two, the Merge. Here, Petro envisaged what would it look like if Manhattan was in the Grand Canyon, and if a wide Hudson coursed through the desert.