All You Can Lose Is Your Heart

All You Can Lose Is Your Heart is a photographic exploration of “storybook”-style ranch homes built in the American southwest in the 1950s and 60s, when builders applied a fairytale aesthetic to the American ranch house exterior by using chalet-style peaks, scalloped fascia boards, and diamond pane windows to evoke a cottage feel. This project consists of more than 60 photographs that allude to photographic architectural typologies while also working in a contemporary social documentary style to highlight the individual, personalized details outside the home. In this way, the photographs reach beyond description to become metaphorical family portraits, images that reflect those living inside. Significant questions are prompted by the work regarding our Western middle-class perceptions of the “ideal” home and the ways those perceptions have shifted as the economy has fluctuated and the model of the nuclear family has come under increasing scrutiny.