One of the themes I have been exploring in my series Economic Entropy is the idea of whitewash. Whitewashing is a method often used by real estate brokers to erase the graphic history of a site or previous use of a commercial building by painting it over.
The day I shot this photo, I was waiting for friends Kipp Normand and Ray Raposa to arrive at a location for a press photo shoot for Ray (the same location where I coincidentally shot Thonet). I was parked on Hamilton Avenue in Indianapolis about a block from the location. As I stood staring at this fence, I realized that just a few blocks down on Hamilton was the site if the grizzly Hamilton Avenue mass murders of 2006, where seven people were senselessly killed. I was immediately tempted to go shoot the house, but as I looked at this half-painted fence, I saw a more poetic image: that of a partially whitewashed fence which seemed an impossible task to complete. The history of Hamilton Avenue could not be erased. And the fence was one of the most modest, genuine examples of economic entropy that I had encountered.
I received good news this week from the Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston (Winchester) MA. This photograph was selected for it's annual juried exhibition which runs July 8th through August 30th. Selected by Catherine Edelman, it looks like an interesting show with work by Colleen Plumb, Katrina d'Autremont, and Eve Morgenstern among others. Check it out if you're in Beantown.
