Dissolution

Dissolution is an ongoing body of work that spans almost 10 years. This series is made up of images of the remains of formerly inhabited spaces. Dissolution has taken me all over the world, from farmhouses of the Eastern Shore of MD, to ghost towns of the California desert, and now to the ruins of the villages surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the Ukraine. Some places have tragedy attached to them; in others luck just ran out, fires consumed homes, owners passed away, circumstances took people from the places they called home. Dissolution is about memory and loss. I have been fascinated by abandonment for most of my life, the reasons places were abandoned, what was left behind, the process of decay once an abandoned property has no one left to care for it. Each house becomes its own universe with a unique story, a place that was meaningful to the people who once called it home. Inside each house is a collective spirit. In entering and photographing the remains of homes, schools, churches, train stations, and commercial spaces, I seek to find remnants of the former inhabitants. In doing so, I aim to create an image that can evoke a sense of collective memory that I believe is inside us all. Each home that is abandoned acts as a catalyst for our individual memories and experiences of the idea of home, leaving or losing a home, and eventually trying to recreate that first home and place of safety- long after we have left. These images speak of my childhood and my own feelings of loss and are wrapped tightly in my memories of my grandparents’ house where I grew up.