CURB APPEALThroughout history, the treatment and arrangement of shelter have revealed more about a particular people than have any other products of the creative arts. Housing is an outward expression of the inner human nature; no society can be fully understood apart from the residences of its members. -Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier Curb Appeal is a body of work comprised of about 40 large color photographs of mid-western suburban landscapes. The photos confront the rapidly expanding, eerily homogenized contemporary suburban landscape as a projection and manifestation of fears and desires and its role in social construction of collective identity. As Edward Soja warns, "we must be insistently aware of how space can be made to hide consequences from us, how relations of power and discipline are inscribed into apparently innocent spatiality of life, how human geographies become filled with politics and ideology." ** The images highlight that by their spatial arrangements and devices, suburban housing developments emphasize privacy, separation, and conformity and neglect the importance of civic and public spaces. I investigate the tension between suburbia's overt privateness and its rhetoric of welcome. In the images of damaged homes and properties, themes of transgression expand to become a violation of the body itself, positioning the viewer/photographer as the excluded other. Curb Appeal is intended to explore the problems and possibilities of suburban developments as a site of contention to expanding privatization and social withdrawal. |
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all content © Mark Slankard 2000 - 2011 |
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