When Dakota Santiago performed a Google search of urban decay in the South Bronx, he received a number of hits. When he did the same for Jersey City, he found next to nothing online.

To shine a light on Jersey City's deteriorating neighborhoods, the 21-year-old photography student at New Jersey City University began photographing these areas as part of a semester-long independent study project this past spring.

"So this is where I found a void in coverage and decided to exploit that void by going out into the streets myself with a camera to bring to light something I felt has been hidden or just simply overlooked," Santiago, a Bayonne resident, wrote in an email.

He chose the neighborhoods of Bergen-Lafayette and Greenville because he thinks those areas are where the most urban decay is located in Jersey City.

"It's the section of the city that suffers the worst of it," he said.

Santiago took a total of 468 photos of abandoned homes, storefronts, and factories as well as graffiti over a two-week period. After editing, he wound up using 75 to 80 images for his project. He used a 1970's 35 millimeter SLR camera to achieve a grainy look and then developed the rolls in a photo lab.

In order to portray the abandonment, he photographed at early dawn and usually in single-digit temperature, many times immediately following a snow storm. As a result, the streets are vacant in most of his photos.

Santiago was once stopped by a police officer when photographing a PSE&G crew that was standing outside of an abandoned building, but was left alone after he showed his ID from the New York Daily News, where he works in the mail room. Santiago also encountered an angry man when was shooting a vacant building on Woodward Street.

However, he was also stopped by two people who liked and supported his project, he said.

Santiago was satisfied with his exterior shots, but wished he would have shot more interior photos. He went inside few homes and buildings because he was afraid of what would have happened if he did so.

Last month, The Jersey Journal published a 11-part series on the neighborhoods surrounding Martin Luther King Drive in Jersey City and highlighted urban decay as a part of the coverage.

When Santiago presented the finished project to his classmates, most of them said they had no idea of the state of those neighborhoods, some of which are not far from the NJCU campus.

"I hope that the images can get the message across that the focus in re-development should shift from Downtown to these neighborhoods and not for transplant New Yorkers or Wall Street firms, but for the people who make that community their home and life."