This gallery of images is being made in apartments prepared for newly arriving refugees to the Chicago area. The images are made hours to minutes before the new arrivals get to their new apartments for the first time. Often I'm alone in the space making these images but sometimes the volunteers are present and setting up the spaces. I occasionally will still be in the apartment for the arrivals (usually with the volunteers who like to meet the refugees) but most often I make photographs and leave before their arrival so as not to impose on people when they are just getting settled in the first hours of their arrival to a new country.
Thanks for sharing these. For some reason the fridge and freezer pictures are really startling and striking to me. On the other hand, I am imaging what it must mean and feel like to enter a space that is your own, or as much of your own as anything has been since you fled home.
I hear from Maria Kenney that they have finally gotten things set up for you to photograph there. Will look forward to that and the subsequent update.
Hope your show Friday night went well.
The stillness, the airless, the sterile quality, the lifelessness, is so beautifully communicated in these images is striking. Its amazing to consider that these spaces also hold such promise.
We’ll speak at SPE more:) Judy