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With housing availability and eviction rates at crisis levels, Where the Heart Is: Portraits from Vernacular American Trailer and Mobile Home Parks investigates this largest form of unsubsidized American affordable housing. My ongoing collaboration challenges the ingrained stereotyping of the estimated 20 million Americans who live in manufactured housing (as stigmatized trailer and mobile homes are being rebranded) while revealing what’s rapidly being lost.
This project is informed by research into areas like the American Dream, zoning, and demographics as relate to the manufactured housing “umbrella”. Conversations and interviews with park residents, and collaboration with professionals involved in related academic fields and housing advocacy, expand the voices and viewpoints of the accompanying narrative.
I am especially drawn to the confined yards and entryways around homes where individual choices in ornamentation and landscaping, despite or often due to limited financial resources, express the personality of the unseen occupants.
Portraits of individual homes are also visually classified and constructed into a library of typology grids, archiving differences and commonalities within and across communities and states.
I began Where the Heart Is in 2017, with travel to date within ten states throughout the United States, and continue to photograph and record video interviews with mobile and manufactured housing community residents.
