Aftermath

 This series was incredibly interesting for me.  It began as an attempt to stray from my style of constructed images and move into the realm of photojournalism.  These images became somewhat personal since they were taken in my own neighborhood.  The woman who inhabited the house depicted was evicted from her home, since she was a hoarder.  She had been living with no electricity, heat, or plumbing was living in her own feces, as well as that of animals infesting her home. 

 Many of these images are particularly heartbreaking for me, simply because it is awful to think that the human need to acquire things can stretch this far.  Why do we feel a need to fill loneliness and despair in this way?  While walking through the home, I was overwhelmed physically and emotionally.  The stench was overpowering and the sadness seemed to weigh heavily on the home.  I literally felt weighed down.

 This series, for me, became more about the aftermath of the hoarding than the original story as I knew it.  It speaks, on a more macro sense, of the aftermath of trauma and the idea of the hidden self within the shell that the world sees.  As an onlooker, I never knew what lay inside the walls of this home and what scars would come to light after entering it.