Collecting Houses
I started on my promised journey to collect houses in my neighborhood last week. As I began I had several interesting experiences. The woman across the street was hanging out of her window, as she does on any warm day of the season. I am strangely convinced that she might enjoy the power of "yelling" conversations from above. As I was photographing her house, she yelled down at me a question, "Why are you taking pictures of my house?" I was caught off guard, no one was supposed to care of notice me doing this. In reality, every house in the world is available on google earth so I am not uncovering anything that hasn't been made public previously. I answered her by explaining that I was documenting the architecture of the street, she accepted, and I continued. However this interaction made me feel as if I was invading the privacy of very public houses. As I went down the street house by house taking photos, I became more nervous that people would wonder why I was photographing their houses, too. I put on my professional face, and justified that what I was doing was not harming anyone and continued.
With this project I found myself looking at each house in a different way than I had before and realizing little details. One house, right across the street looks generally uninhabited but that day I saw a glimpse of humanity inside the cracked blinds. If you are like me, I look for any reason to start making up a story about who might be inside and why they are seemingly hiding. My favorite house of the shoot is the one that you can't quite see because it is hiding behind 2 very large cedar trees. It is like a person who desperately needs a hair cut!
