Feature

Resettlement

Artist Julia Curtin “sampled” iconic photographs of poor dwellings from America’s Great Depression, then built scale models of those houses, and covered them with scans from the original photos.

Photographs and text by Julia Curtin

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Resettlement focuses on the vernacular architecture, the transient, makeshift structures inhabited by the migratory victims of the 1930s Great Depression.

By sampling images from the Farm Security Administration catalogue, a vast collection of works by photographers (e.g. Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange) that became central in defining aspects of the Documentary genre, and images that are embedded in the history of photography, I have deconstructed and subsequently reconstructed these buildings to form a three dimensional model of the settlement depicted in the original image.

Through this process I attempt to open up a contemporary space for the interpretation of this work.

— Julia Curtin

Editor's note: We discovered Julia Curtin's work while attending the Rhubarb Rhubarb portfolio review in Birmingham, England.