Alison Smith – “In Between”
This is the second grad presentation I’m able to attend. Here’s the qoute in the book:
“The In Between series is a documentation of neighborhoods conducted by capturing the negative space between consecutive houses. By eliminating the front facade, the focal point shifts to the unnatural mounding of the land that is further highlighted by the repetitive nature of uniformly framed shots and multiple photographs viewed in sequence. In addition to a topographical look at the land, the photographs focus on what is in the space where two, perfectly calculated, side property lines meet in the middle. The small strip of side property is too small for much use, though it becomes most telling of the environment.”
Alison did her BFA at the university of Ohio and is now in graduate at the university of Georgia. She’s been with SPE for some time on the other side of the lines, behind a desk helping out.
She starts her lecture by talking about how her parents have lived in 10 different houses over the last twenty or so years, which has created a lack of allegiance to any particular city, but has helped focus on how fast growing suburban areas are similar around the country. People are not purchasing one home as a place to live for generations – they have become yet another disposable commodity.
Before she started photographing In Between, she was already photographing in Bridgewater – a development in florida. Most of the houses there are bought and rented off to college students. The houses there offered her a generic pallet of how much our countries land is bought, plowed, and built up to be used for a short series of time.
Now she looks to capture between the negative space between each house – often showing multiple images next to each other, focusing on the space with a small border between the houses’ outer walls.
The mounding of the land she speaks of can be seen here – a “wave like motion of rise and fall between the houses.” In the early images she tried to match up the paneling between the houses so it was less distracting to the viewier.
She often tried to portray a line of as many houses as possible, viewing how the land is shaped by this development – and the uniformity found even in emptiness. The images melt together so even in her own editing process it was difficult to keep the images in the correct order.
The small differences become more important, remnants like a beer can, for sale sign, or utility box. She deliberately avoids photographing people since she’s more interested in the stories told by the objects left.
Eventually she decided she was not as interested in documenting just one neighborhood and started trying to bring the same way of seeing to other areas. She became more free, not worrying as much with lining up houses, but still focusing on the space between them in her image sequences.
She also started using single images when there was a reason – like a pronounced break in the property line when there was construction.
She’s talking now about a “mixed use” neighborhood, Norton Collins – but it’s still in an isolated rural area, and it’s not realistic to survive without venturing out far by car.
In some of her images the houses are almost touching – highlighting the desire to live in a single family home. She’s still experimenting with the spaces of these images – possibly increasing the distance between houses.
Sometimes she’s photographed access roads between houses, needed to actually use them since they are so tightly packed. She’s also looked at roof lines and other ways the house spacing interacts. Some newer images are focused on the driveway (though often having a view of the spot between the houses,)
In her talk, she mentions a lot of interesting facts about planned communities – lots must be landscaped in a natural way, but palm trees were painted white to match house columns, service utilities must be hidden (according to the architectural control committee), etc. She’s interested in how the build environment collides with the natural. Other projects include photographing model homes – the perfection of the display, or a house that is lived in and staged to look homey, but still generic so potential buyers can imagine their belongings in a home. She tries to focus on things that would not usually be shown for promotion of the house.
I think this project is really relevent – now that the housing market has tanked it’s on people’s mind a lot more. It’s nice to see so many projects presented that tie into each other. Aesthetically, the between the houses shots are a lot more interesting than I thought they would be – which is wonderful. I really liked this work and presentation, and as soon as Alison emails me some images I’ll add some more thoughts.
[This post to be updated with links, proper spellings, and images!]