Many are drawn to abandoned places, often experiencing a visceral reaction. The texture of the peeling paint. The color of the rust. The elegant juxtaposition of whole and empty spaces. The clutter of discarded objects. Was the house defined by the people who lived in it, or can it be defined by the structure that remains? How many years did it take to become in such disrepair; consumed by the elements?
No Forwarding Address offers the viewer a range of photographed subjects, from individual houses to an entire town, to explore and imagine their stories. The overlapping frames suggest the passage of time as a single house succumbs, room by room, to the decay. While individual “portraits” of buildings depict a town, dwindled to a population of approximately 12. And finally, there are photographic collages that combine the materials that make a house a home: photos, wallpaper, wood, nails, house numbers. Always as curious about the process, as much as the subject, each abandoned place has been delivered in a manner befitting its existence.
Patricia Stockman has been chasing and photographing abandoned places up and down the East Coast, and out West, since her first college photography course. This exhibition is a realization of that personal intrigue, the lives and stories lost, the consumption of land into newer, denser neighborhoods, and the quiet beauty in the loss.
Work by the other artists of TAG will also be shown.