1. I’m interested in your two-part project, The Great Recession, in which you show us scenes of abandonment in light America’s recent financial crisis. You made photographs that portray the recession’s impact on two of the most hard-hit industries, the auto industry and the housing market. Can you talk a little about what drew you to document these environments specifically, as well as the financial crisis as a whole?
«Taking inspiration from the still photography created during The Great Depression, in December 2008 I partnered with three generous supporters of my work: Bimal Patel, Robert Halper and Gretchen LeMaistre. We set out to create a body of work around the economic crisis of our day. At the time we didn’t know we were in a period that would later be called The Great Recession; we just knew the economic turmoil was serious. We wanted to understand and reflect on what was happening. At the beginning we felt a little helpless, but as we began working on these photographs we started to feel there was value in serving as witness. We named the project Foreclosure, USA. All of the photographs were made in Stockton, CA, which 60 Minutes had dubbed the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis. Bimal helped steer the project and wrote the opening for the self-published book we designed. Robert supported the project financially. Gretchen helped edit and did the final post-production on the images. Foreclosure, USA was a team effort.»
2. In the, Dealership Wreck series, there’s a great degree of emptiness in your photographs of derelict car dealerships. I’m reminded of Stephen Wilkes’ Ellis Island project, where we get the sense of what used to be by seeing what is left behind. You capture the remnants of a very specific type of industry/culture, and I see a degree of irony in some of your photographs of promotional banners and signage, in that they are left to aggrandize ideas and products that have been replaced by a sort of void. I have conflicting feelings of sadness and contempt for the loss of something that seems so artificial. What were your feelings while photographing these places? How many dealerships did you photograph in all? Did the images you made change your perspective on these types of corporate cultures?
«That’s a great set of questions. I’d like to start by describing how The Dealership Wreck came about. We completed work on Foreclosure, USA in 2009 and began to exhibit the series in 2010. At the same time I started to notice empty monolithic dealerships alongside the freeway everywhere I traveled. I researched the phenomenon and discovered that since 2009, over 2,300 auto dealerships in America were shuttered. The closings, which happened largely as a result of bankruptcy and the US government’s auto industry bailout and restructuring, caused thousands of industry workers to lose their jobs and put 70 million square feet of commercial real estate on the market. I let the idea sit for a few months, resisting it because I didn’t want to shoot more abandoned structures. It can be quite a cliché. However, I continued to make mental notes on the location of interesting dealerships as I passed them. Since the dealerships kept returning to my mind and it appeared that no other photographer was working on the idea, (plus it continued the story of The Great Recession), I began working on it in early Autumn 2010.
I’m glad you asked what I was feeling as I photographed the dealerships. It was a mix of emotions. I found it easier to handle than the personal intimacy of foreclosed homes, but I was worried about our economy and the workers that depended on the dealerships for a living. However, as a photographer it was a grand adventure. Auto dealerships are very accessible and there were so many abandoned and shuttered ones I could simply drive in any direction and pull into an auto mall and find one, two or even three of them. I often shot at night because the mood matched the subject, and I have fond memories of standing in abandoned dealership parking lots while music wafted over the cool Autumn breeze from the dealerships that remained in business. I suppose the music they played 24 hours a day was a theft and vandal deterrent. I’m not sure the exact number of dealerships I photographed, but it was over 50.
You asked if the images I made changed my perspective on these types of corporate cultures. I’d like to answer by reflecting on the lesson that has weighed on me since completing the project. Many things can appear to be exceedingly solid, so solid as to exist beyond all possibility of failure. The US auto industry must have appeared like that for decades, unimaginably strong and impossibly solid. We’ve just lived through a period where this huge American industry has been shaken to its core. We lost iconic brands. Pontiac, builder of the Trans Am, GTO, and Firebird, has closed. Chrysler is no longer American owned. Witnessing this sea change has broadened my worldview and serves as a reminder that the impossibly strong might someday crumble and fall.»
3. The second part of The Great Recession is entitled, Foreclosure, USA. In this series you took the camera to foreclosed homes and areas heavily hit by the financial strain. This series also casts its themes around abandonment, however it feels a bit different because you some images focus a bit more on the details. Broken blinds, exposed electrical wires, a dilapidated and un-kept pool. What were the circumstances behind these homes and the area in general? What, overall, do you hope to achieve with these two projects?
«Foreclosure, USA is the first part of The Great Recession series. All of the photographs in this body of work were made in Stockton, California. Stockton is one of the hardest hit cities in the United States’ foreclosure crisis. Only a few years ago, Stockton seemed to manifest America in its unreserved sense of possibility. Sadly, in the first quarter of 2009 (while I was working on this series), one in twenty-seven housing units in the area received a foreclosure notice, against a national rate of about one in one hundred fifty-nine. Each of the homes you see in this series is either in the foreclosure process or has already been foreclosed upon. I wanted to serve as witness to some of the struggles the United States has weathered during The Great Recession.»
4. What’s in store for you over the next year, photographically or otherwise?
«I’ll be exhibiting widely; I have three exhibitions opening over the next three months. I released a new body of work in May: Judgment Day. I released over thirty new images in June from a work in progress titled ROOM, a collaboration with Michael Jang. Michael created a body of work in the Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco a decade ago and I’ve been continuing his series since late 2010. We are just about to release a self-published book of the work titled The Point.
I have another collaboration scheduled for release in August or September, for this work I’ve partnered with Gretchen LeMaistre. It’s a portrait project tentatively titled Ingleside. It features the staff of the Ingleside Inn of Palm Springs, California. Also, I just received an exciting invitation to exhibit and speak at the Lishui Photo Festival in Lishui, China this November.»
5. Last but not least, what’s your favorite color?
«My favorite color is green.»
Interview by Gregory Jones
© All copyright remains with photographer Kirk Crippens