In the early 1990s, after moving to Providence, Rhode Island, he started producing formally complex, often dark depictions of the urban, suburban, and industrial landscape.
This work, which grew into the project titled "Wilderness" continued to evolve when Raphaelson moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1995.
It later caught the attention of former Museum of Modern Art curator John Szarkowski, who acquired prints on behalf of private collections.
[1] Raphaelson began working in color in 2005, continuing to explore urban spaces bordering the occupied and abandoned, and the residential and industrial.
In 2012 he brought a hand camera into the New York City Subway, photographing passengers through the reflections, obfuscations, and framing of the train windows.