Edmonton Post-Apocalypse: The Anatomy of a Viral Art Project

Note for 2026: What started as a personal exploration of dystopian themes during the 2020 lockdowns turned into a massive viral moment. Within a month of releasing the first images, the series generated hundreds of thousands of organic views and was picked up by major media outlets including CTV, Global News, and CBC. For me, this project was a masterclass in the intersection of cultural timing and high-end visual execution. It proved that when you combine a highly relevant concept with meticulous digital artistry, you don’t need a massive ad spend to capture the public’s imagination and dominate the local news cycle.

I created these images manually using advanced Photoshop compositing and matte painting techniques. Today, with the rapid advancement of generative AI tools, the timeline to execute concepts like this has been slashed dramatically. Looking back at this project reminds me why I have embraced AI so heavily in my current workflow: it allows for this level of world-building and visual storytelling at a speed that was impossible just a few years ago.

I’ve always had a love for the dystopian and post-apocalyptic genre in tv, movies, and games. Movies like 28 Days Later, Children of Men, and The Walking Dead series always captivated my imagination; left me wondering how I myself would fare in such a dire and destitute world. As compelling as these types of stories were, they always seemed far away from my own reality. Hollywood always shows us end of the world scenarios centering around well-known cities – Vegas being overrun by zombies, New York being wiped out by apocalyptic tsunamis, or aliens blowing up the White House.

In 2019 I started watching the series Black Summer, Netflix’s newest zombie apocalypse show. I instantly felt a sense of unease on how real it all felt. A quick google later, and I understood why – the series was filmed in Calgary and the surrounding areas. The show captivated me; I was watching people run for their lives in familiar cul-de-sacs. Survivors being hunted by marauders driving jacked-up Dodge pick-up trucks through small Alberta farming towns. I had never seen such a show that had my home province as its backdrop, and I started to imagine what Edmonton would be like in an end-of-world scenario.

So we all know how 2020 went. Businesses shut down, streets emptied. Oil prices turned negative for the first time in history. We watched foreboding news reports on the daily and listened to experts talk of needing to open field hospitals to anticipate an influx of the sick and dying. Listening to the news had felt like we were living in the first 10 minutes of one of those apocalyptic movies.

This is how my post-apocalyptic series was born. My imagination started to run wild with “what-if” scenarios. What if we were able to have a glimpse of what Alberta would look like, hundreds of years after the fall of civilization? Imagine if we were able to explore and look around in this future-forgotten world – what stories would we be able to piece together? What evidence could we find that got us here? Were there conflicts? Did we ever survive COVID?

I shot the photos in September 2020 and completed my first set a few months later, posting them to Reddit and Instagram. To my surprise, they quickly spread throughout social media, with hundreds of thousands of views within a month. It was clear that the images struck a chord with people, as it was evident that I was not the only one imagining what-if scenarios in my head.

Throughout 2021 and 2022 I released additional images; more familiar Alberta locations in various states of societal and structural decay. Going forward, I’m still undecided how much more I will create of this Edmonton series. A part of me feels like it had served its purpose, a collective catharsis shared by myself and all the people who were captivated by this artwork. I have hundreds more photos I’ve taken of other locations – Calgary, Vancouver, Chicago, Ottawa, Washington – time will tell if and how I approach those images as well.