ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Instability
My work explores themes of fading places and histories in the landscape of the United States. This series of photographs of recently foreclosed homes and long abandoned homes in Oakland, CA and Detroit, MI is the beginning of an extensive archive of homes across the country in the cities of Oakland, Detroit, Las Vegas, Stockton, Tampa, Denver, Buffalo and Cleveland.
The foreclosure crisis is wreaking havoc on cities and neighborhoods across the country. In some neighborhoods at least one in every five homes stands vacant causing higher rates of crime and rapid neglect that will take years if not decades to turn around. The abandoned homes in Detroit number in the tens of thousands and eerily foretell what may likely come to areas across the country where decline has only recently become a problem.
I am moved by the fragility of the sometimes beautiful and ornate domestic architecture in these landscapes. Sadly, the houses here no longer represent the American dream of belonging and security but rather of uncertainty and loss. Across the country more and more homes are being emptied and cast off, their future and those of their former residents now tragically unstable.