In Spring 2015, I created a photo project that explored the distinction between ‘house’ and ‘home’ by documenting the ways people filled and used their spaces. For my springboard project, I’d like to continue with a focus on people that have two homes or houses, however they might define the places where they sleep at night. I’m very interested in the way space is used to create the feeling of home and what “home” means to different people. Specifically, the way children of separated or divorced families define their spaces and create belonging within inconsistency. Personally, I have always struggled with the concepts of ‘house’ and ‘home’ and utilized my first project to visualize and explore the concepts further. Being a child myself that traveled back and forth between houses on a near daily basis, it often meant having duplicates of belongings, or half remnants of slightly different version of myself at each house. I want to explore the concepts of space, identity, materialism, belonging, and separation through the ‘house’ versus ‘home’ dichotomy.
The method I’d like to utilize would include conversations, writing, photography, and possibly video. The culmination of the work will be in an exhibition of photos, writings, and video. I want to select a core group of people with diverse situations to focus on in interviews and photography. I plan on first conducting interviews with the subjects to obtain a background about who they are and their unique situation/perspective. Then, I want to visually document them in their home spaces and houses. It would be interesting to recognize the dichotomy of the two houses. I would seek my subjects through friends and friends of friends and incorporate a self-portrait portion.
Research Help: I am really interested in finding literature on divorce/separation affects on the children, home vs. house theory, and examples of photojournalistic work that could help inspire/show me how to conduct the interviews and photographs.
