Artwatch: James D. Griffioen
By Christa Terry
Photographer James D. Griffioen takes gorgeous and fascinating photos of little houses, lost neighborhoods, and a fresh look at everyday architecture, among other things. Things like, well, feral houses. What’s a feral house, you ask? The photog describes them thusly:
I’ve seen “feral” used to describe dogs, cats, even goats. But I have wondered if it couldn’t also be used to describe certain houses in Detroit. Abandoned houses are really no big deal here. Some estimate that there are as many as 10,000 abandoned structures at any given time, and that seems conservative. But for a few beautiful months during the summer, some of these houses become “feral” in every sense: they disappear behind ivy or the untended shrubs and trees planted generations ago to decorate their yards. The wood that framed the rooms gets crushed by trees rooted still in the earth. The burnt lime, sand, gravel, and plaster slowly erode into dust, encouraged by ivy spreading tentacles in its endless search for more sunlight.
It’s cool to see someone documenting the decay of society rather than society flourishing. Both are inevitable aspects of humanity’s control of the planet, but one is heralded while the other is, I don’t know, mourned? I thought this quote was telling: “Sometimes cities shrink. Sometimes neighborhoods get turned into something else. It’s nothing to get depressed about.” Indeed.
August 28th, 2009 at 11:22 am
I guess this is as good of a place as any to post and let you know. I tried to subscribe to your RSS feed, but when i clicked it I got an error that said “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING” followed by other gibberish that scrolled off the screen. I had to force the page to stop loading because it locked up my browser. Just thought you might like to know.