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Kathleen Tunnell Handel is engaged in a long term, research based exploration of the affordable housing subgenre of mobile home and manufactured housing communities. Her immersive project Where the Heart Is: Portraits from Vernacular American Trailer and Mobile Home Parks includes her photographic images from communities, to date, within Maine, California, New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, Oregon, Massachusetts, and Colorado, archived and presented in the taxonomy and typologies she is creating.
Tunnell Handel’s extensive research, conversations with park residents and managers, and collaboration with sociologists, urban planners, and housing advocates working within the mobile home and manufactured housing “umbrella” informs her work and grounds her fine art aesthetic within the documentary tradition. Her recent incorporation of recorded oral histories and their access through QR codes expands the project’s narrative and hones the work’s primary intention of being in service to advocacy for affordable housing.
Tunnell Handel’s earlier studies in observational and systems based life sciences at Cornell University, through her exploration of the visual arts and being awarded a BFA in Textile Design from the Rhode Island School of Design, to ongoing studies of photography, fine art printing, and bookmaking have all contributed to her deep interest in visual culture and themes of memory, life systems, and the human experience.
Tunnell Handel lives in New York City and the Berkshires of Massachusetts and photographs widely. Her work has been exhibited in group shows throughout the United States and is in private and institutional collections. All sale proceeds are donated to non-profits.
