Rents are on the rise and cities are overcrowded while home spaces are constantly reducing, becoming smaller and more suffocating. In this scenario, warehouse conversions for home living have become a social phenomenon.
A hulking century-old redbrick box four stories high towers above an overpopulated metropolis and a swiftly changing neighborhood below. Built just before 1915, the establishment at the center of this story was a factory; it produced cosmetics, cotton, rayon and vinyl for nearly sixty years before closing in the late 1980s.
Back then, Williamsburg was a hub for manufacturing but it quickly developed into a desirable area in New York City. In the past fifteen years this part of town has witnessed a fast-paced gentrification process aggressively replacing historical buildings with new luxury condos. The former factory – which was converted into residential units in the early 1990s, is one of the few landmarks which has survived.
‘Behind the Door’ is a photography series capturing the out of the ordinary domestic spaces and characters that inhabit a building facing an uncertain future. Intimate portraits, candid moments and still life images take viewers on an anthropological visual journey through a rapidly vanishing urban way of living.
‘Behind the Door’ is created with a 4 x 5 large format camera and Kodak Portra film.