Neighborhoods
"Neighborhoods" is a narrative photo-essay photographing Hyde Park and surrounding areas. Inspired by the film: News from Home by Chantal Akerman.
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A cluster of houses details a photograph — foreground, mid-ground, background, on these hills they fluctuate. They’re homes, they’re used (partly damaged blinds and miscellaneous things on the balconies,) and they’re old (rusty gutters, discolored window panels, and mushy decaying wood). In the distance, the former William Barton Rogers School — fixed upon its mound, it looms over the central bottom of Hyde Park; demanding your attention.
The neighborhood started as a hub for paper and cotton manufacturing, slowly growing in residents and businesses. Mundane, but charming nonetheless; I wonder, for this workers’ abode, how much has it changed? Alongside the hills, slopes, inclines, and declines, alongside the main avenue, streets and back-roads, are shops, service centers, and restaurants — the dunky, the post, the gas stations, and the delicatessens, all serving the needs of their main customers: the blue-collar during lunch, the suburbanite passer, and the hungry, in need of a snack resident.
Indeed, how much has it changed for this former town, and how much will it change? Around the corner, a rural, indistinguishable landscape; decayed, neglected, and only maintained for its usage. The mix between residential and commercial vaguely calms the nerves of a first-time passer; comforted by the occasional sightings of workers; they: too busy to pay attention, too busy to care. And within closeness, an odd juxtaposition: laughs radiates from a newly built park.
Along the avenue, a mixed viscosity of smells and sounds permeates and saturates the air; the smells of diesel, hot asphalt, and detergent, odiously lingers, amplified by the beeps, bongs, and bangs. Bricks, slabs, trains, trucks, vans, cars, it’s the industrial district; re-purposed and re-built.
And up the avenue, is a growing blockade, manifested by yet again, the simple, but convoluted intersection. Though, it has been temporarily relieved — by an obscure and arbitrarily year-long construction project. Convenient and abundant, are the densely scattered spread of auto-shops; here: issues between customers with repairmen become trivial by the vast array of options. Upon a green light, the faint conversation of a near-by couple is drowned by the overtly loud and obnoxious noise pollution of engines and tires — faintly, ironically enough, a train passes by.
Pass the prickly view, are the things in-between; in-between and behind the things seen. I grew up in the tediums of Hyde Park; more mundane than its already mundane landscape; but there was, and is, a beauty in it I think — a street of median-income housekeepers, home-care aids, and taxi-drivers away at-work, is juvenilely loud on a mid-summers day. The film: News from Home by Chantal Akerman, exemplifies this. The tediums of everyday life, it seems, are enriched by each narration; the routinely train rides, walks, and work, are given intentionality and beauty. Intentionality in their composition, sound design, and story (without being overly narrativized — both metaphorically and audibly). It is a masterclass in this regard; or, an otherwise bliss, for those who love to people-watch. Needless to say, I am continuously inspired by this film.
Spanning three years, Neighborhoods, features photographs of Hyde Park (mainly) and surrounding areas; during my reluctant errand runs, my routes to and from work, and of course, during my on-and-off again, barely habitual photo walks, I photographed the tediums of my everyday life; Chantal Akerman-ing scenes that would otherwise be considered monotonous.
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