WORK: Just A Dream

America's Foreclosed homes

Owning a home is one of the American peoples most common pursuits. It’s not about property ownership or making a profit as much as achieving the American dream, finding peace in the stability of shelter. Right now in America, that hard-sought dream has been taken away from so many. The cycle of systematic debt created by corporate profiteers has come full circle, affecting our entire nation and making the goal of owning a home seemingly that much more unattainable for the next generation.

This series of photographs comes directly from visiting numerous foreclosed homes where I live in upstate New York. While spending time in these homes, wandering through oddly colored rooms, taking in the dull smells of animal dander and black mold, something else began to affect my senses. It can only be described in what I felt standing in the rooms; distress, sadness and loss. I feel something else is still in these homes and these photos hint at its existence by way of a shattered mirror, a deflated baby shower balloon, a decapitated statuette of Mary, a small tacked up American flag with one dangling thread.

I hope these images give a voice to those fleeting details that remain and keep record of the fact that each house was once occupied by people surviving as best they could, the essence of which we may identify with in our own precious homes.