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. 19 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 21