As the availability of affordable housing implodes, with eviction rates and financial instability at crisis levels, Where the Heart Is: Portraits from Vernacular American Trailer and Mobile Home Parks investigates this deeply impacted, primarily American housing form. This ongoing collaboration challenges the ingrained stereotyping of the estimated 20 million Americans who live in communities of manufactured homes (as stigmatized trailer and mobile home parks are being rebranded) while revealing what’s rapidly being lost.

My project is informed by immersive research into areas like the American Dream, zoning, and demographics as relate to the manufactured housing “umbrella”. Recorded interviews with park residents, and collaboration with people involved in related scholarship and housing advocacy, expand the voices and viewpoints of the accompanying narrative.

A strong feeling of community exists within many mobile home parks, often created by zoning enforced isolation that required their siting in formerly undesirable areas. Expanding gentrification around many parks has made the essential workers, families, veterans, immigrants, and retiree residents, who rely on this largest, un-subsidized form of affordable housing, increasingly vulnerable. The weakness or lack of protective regulations make parks the target of equity investors, too often leading to the loss of affordability for the leased site under residents’ self-owned homes, with subsequent eviction, and displacement.

I am especially drawn to the confined yards and entryways around homes. Here, individual choices in ornamentation and landscaping, despite or often due to limited financial resources, reveal the personalities of the unseen occupants and capture their notions of welcome, of beauty, and of home.

Portraits of individual homes are also visually classified and constructed into a library of typology grids, archiving differences and commonalities within and across communities and states.

Where the Heart Is was begun in 2017, with travels to date within Maine, California, Texas, Colorado, NY, Georgia, Oregon, Massachusetts, NJ, and Arizona. I continue to photograph and record video interviews with community residents, while preparing a book maquette and soliciting collaborative exhibition opportunities.

All work is available in Limited Edition Archival Pigment prints. The single images are most often exhibited in the 16.5” x 24.75” size but are available in 20.5” x 30.75” and 27.25” x 41” sizes as well. The Typology Grids are most often exhibited in the 16.5” x 47.5” size but are available in 20.5” x 59.5” and 27.25” x 78.75” sizes as well.