Foreclosed Dreams
David H. Wells
Spring/2013
David H. Wells, Los Angeles, 2009.
David H. Wells has fashioned a career
shooting freelance photographic essays and photojournalism, and working as a photo educator. Foreclosed
Dreams represents a foray into a new, if
familiar territory for Wells. Having published with such illustrious print media as the Philedelphia Inquirer, Miami
Herald, Sports Illustrated, and The New
York Times Magazine, Wells is clearly a
seasoned photo essayist accustomed to
making work for the printed page. With
this exhibition, Wells takes the opportunity to adapt and expand his work to
new media and show his photography
alongside audio-visual interview in a
physical exhibition setting. COLLECT
magazine's Marcel McVay sat down
with Mr. Wells and had the honor of exploring this transition and some of the
work behind the scenes of Foreclosed
FEATURES
Dreams.
You mentioned Foreclosed Dreams is a
new visual approach for you to a topic
like this one.
First new media approach – not
visual, I've been doing photo essays my
entire career. But it is the first time postdeath of print, if you will, the death of
conventional publications. It's the first
story I've done in the sort of new media approach we now have to take. What
made Life magazine so succesfful, for
example, was a mono-market. With that
market, more and more publications expanded and now with the Internet, those
are mostly all gone. Now there's a million
channels. And so as a photographer who
came out of that old model, this is the
first project where I have adapted more
successfully then I ever had before to the
new model. That's what I meant.
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So, has that changed your working
methods in the field – or is it after the
fact (post-production) that you have to
adapt?
This multimedia piece, which
is another component in addressing
new media channels, does reflect a
changed strategy. Not only am I photographing but I am interviewing. It
used to be that there was a conven-
David H. Wells, Fright, California, 2011.
tional divide: the writer solved the word
problem, the photographer solved the
picture problem. In this project I am
trying to solve both—it's the first time
I've had to do both. I like the results; I'm
still processing how much I like the effort to get them.
What is the interview process and what
is the relationship to photographing?
Are you talking to the folks whose houses you're photographing?
No, I'm not. To date I have not
talked to the people who's houses I'm
photographing. The goal of the work is to
give somebody the opportunity to look
at the work and say, “That could be my
house, that could be my childhood, that could have been
me.” And as soon as you start
making it about that family, unfortunately it gives people the
opportunity to dismiss them.
They screwed up, they made a
mistake. And I don't want people doing that, I want them to
think, “That could be me.”
So I've been interviewing people who wanted to be
interviewed, who had something to say about foreclosure
– many of whom had been
foreclosed upon, but were not
directly related to those houses.
And that is on purpose. They
could talk to the process, but
they weren't talking about a
particular house.
You want that relationship to
remain anonymous to you, the
photographer, as well as the
viewer.
Yes, and the other thing
I was trying to do, and I am very
happy with in this piece, is a provide a
wide range of both genders and accents.
One of the people I interviewed was from
Eastern Europe, another was from North
Carolina. Those are the two most obvious accents. I interviewed my wife who
is from India, so while you are listening
you have sort of a diversity of people
talking about home.
When you start a conversation with
someone, are you searching for a more
personal connection to the loss of home,
or is it a cultural change in attitude towards the “American dream?”
There are a couple of things.
One is that I don't interview a lot of people, I'm fairly selective about who I interview. Second thing is that I ask them
all the same questions on purpose. The
questions build from general experiences of home and childhood and all that, to
the specifics of foreclosure photographs
and if they have any experience with
foreclosure. Typical interviewing style,
you loosen them up and then you get to
the hard stuff later.
I don't know if I'm looking for
anything per se except that, in every interview, I'm listening hoping for those
one or two lines that I can drop into this
thing, when I say to myself, that's it.
I think they can speak
articulately about
home. That's really
what I was looking for.
Most of these folks are close to you?
No, not necessarily. They're
people, though, who I think will make
good interviews. I'm thinking of a couple of people who I interviewed in North
Carolina who I didn't know, but one of
them was a politician, one of them taught
art in public schools – people that others
introduced me to who said, I think they
can speak articulately about home. That's
really what I was looking for.
Have you shown subjects the photo-
Foreclosed Dreams David H. Wells
20
FEATURES
COLLECT
graphs before interviewing? To what Farm Security Administration project.
extent are they responding to the pho- During the depression, the US governtographs within the interview process? ment hired a bunch of photographers to
99% of the people will have photograph the state of America during
seen the work on the web, because the depression. The original project was
that's almost always how I'm first in- to do what's called the New FSA, to do
troduced to them, if I don't know them something on this recession. That projpersonally. Then they'll see the photos ect didn't come together for reasons unon my laptop when we're meeting. related.
And then I turn the microphone on.
Then I started researching this
But the last
part of each interview
is to ask them about
their reaction to the
photographs. There
are a couple of people in the piece who
are talking about the
photographs themselves because the
best part of those interviews was their
reaction to the photos. The guy that said
"screw you to the
banks", he gave me
nothing until the end.
And then at the end
when he said “I'm
saying screw you to
the banks” - because
he'd been foreclosed
upon – it came out,
he was giving me
David H. Wells, Providence, RI, 2011.
what he had been
through. That's why I liked that quote story. I initially photographed the people
so much because it really is his.
who cleaned houses out for foreclosures.
A lot of times they would talk about what
How long have you been working on they saw and you could hear they were
this project?
empathizing with these people. VisuI started in April of 2009. Orig- ally what you saw was a bunch of guys
inally I was one of a group of photog- throwing out trash, but what was amazraphers during the beginning of what ing was the stuff they were throwing out.
became the “Great Recession”, we were It would make great video, but it wasn't a
going to do something similar to the photo story.
So after about two weeks I
changed the project approach to not be
about the people, but about the stuff that
was left behind. And since April 2009 I've
worked in twelve states so far, with that
same idea of getting in after the foreclosure and before its cleaned up because
that's when you could see the ghosts
of the people that used to be there. And
that's whats in this show.
It's easy to think about
it as an emptiness, but
it's not just that. It is
empty, but there's a lot
of presence.
That's
what
I'm aspiring to. To
get that point where
you know somebody
was there, but it's not
so specific that it becomes about John or
Mary. I'm trying to keep
it more open. I'm trying to stay away from
those individuals but I
want their presence or
their ghosts to be in the
background.
Is this an ongoing
project?
It is still ongoing. If anybody who
reads this wants to help me get into
houses, I could use the help! I'm going to
Alabama, Mississippi, Arizona in the next
two weeks.
Foreclosed Dreams ran April 18 through
May 12th, 2013 at Yellow Peril Gallery.
Foreclosed Dreams David H. Wells
Spring/2013
FEATURES
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