Photographer Todd Hido, who exhibited at Jen Bekman Gallery's A New American Portrait, serves as the guest editor of Witness Number 7, a forthcoming book from Nazaraeli Press (March 2009). His own series of interiors of vacant, foreclosed homes is juxtaposed with portraits by Leon Borensztein made during the 1980s. As with Hido's images of motels, occupied homes, and homes at night, this new series suggests remnants of human presence as the viewer is confronted by stark and abandoned interiors.
The publisher writes,
His potent and surreal photographs of empty spaces evoke a longing for the time when things were better in those homes. What went wrong? Who used to lived there? Borensztein, an immigrant from Poland, visited homes and businesses in the suburbs of Stockton, Fresno and Bakersfield, photographing his subjects in front of a generic backdrop to create a rich sociological document. In Witness Number 7, Borensztein's subjects stand in metaphorically for the families evicted from Hido's foreclosed homes.
The differences between an empty "occupied home" and an empty "foreclosed home" are barely discernible as captured by Hido's lens. Both series offer eerily unsettling glimpses into the changing American homestead, and raise questions about whether a home is really about the space or the people within it.
Witness Number 7 is available for pre-order at Photo-Eye.
A New American Portrait at Jen Bekman Gallery