Final Portfolio

My photographs explore the monotonous external appearance of contemporary living spaces in Orlando, Florida. Housing complexes throughout the city seem empty yet vast, strangely intimidating rather than welcoming or homely. Every road looks identical with endless rows repeating the same structure. Small details create the feeling of a constructed community hoping to convey particular ideas about the neighborhood as a whole rather than the individual human beings trying to call these structures their home.

            I am interested in how we construct our identity and the ways environments form our conceptions of the self. For example, I wonder how the exterior of our homes affects the way we view ourselves and the way we are perceived by others. In an age when the clothes we wear or the car we drive contributes to the construction of identity, how does the exterior of the structure we call home contribute to perceptions of the self? By approaching these buildings from alternative angles and different perspectives, I emphasize an underlying problem with contemporary structures that are rapidly and uniformly built to meet a consumer need.

Their blank, eerie façades outlined by the continuous blue sky create a surface level appearance of harmony and bliss. However, closer inspection reveals weird empty spaces, sickening saturated colors, and a strange lack of human presence. I photographed housing complexes in deprived and privileged neighborhoods with both similarly ordered, detached, and minimally decorated even extended to the highly manicured landscaping. Through my photographs, I encourage the viewer to contemplate the meaning of these uniform spaces in connection with modernity and the struggle for individualization.