home

home is comprised of photographs of residences that are in the transitional period between being occupied by different families. The interior rooms have either been emptied or have been staged by the brokers who are attempting to sell the houses. All the houses are located within Fairfield County, Connecticut, one of the most affluent areas along the east coast. What separates a place that one lives in from a place that one calls home? Is it what is at home or what memories an individual associates with being home? Is a new home a place that is a retreat from the surrounding world? Is it a place for one to create a new idea of what home means to him or her? I have felt uncomfortable referring to anywhere I have been living in the last few years as my home. This project is a way for me to investigate what “being home” means to me, whether it is filled with objects that I associate memories with or that the space is devoid of any meaning to my own being. I isolate myself from my physical surroundings, partially because I am looking for something new and that I am partially ashamed of who I was and who I have become. The photos were originally exhibited in a dark room on light boxes. This allowed me to create a space that contains windows into other realities, separating the viewer from their own perception of what home is and reflecting what my own view of home. The sources of light, which are the images themselves, were the only glimpses into a subjective reality outside of the pitch-black space. The houses are naked or sparsely decorated to reflect my mindset of being at home and seeing other families’ homes. The dark space echoes how vacant the houses that I grew up in and have grown to know feel, and how materialistic and superficial some of the families I have grown close with are