These are photographs from my grandparents' condominium units. My mother's parents and dad's parents moved from the homes they raised their children in to identical units in different buildings in the same condo complex in 1989. These photos were taken in December 2004 so quite a bit of the furniture they moved from their homes has been replaced but you can still pick out themes.
The primary reason for this project was to introduce a new aspect to the endless nature/nurture argument. It also complicates the question as to what degree mass-produced residences appeal to similar people and to what degree similar people are created by them. It also illustrates how people tend to marry people from the same economic class.
I photographed these with a Hasselblad SWC/M, using Polaroid proofs to align the camera accurately. I actually did this exact project for the first time in Feb of 2004 but decided to rephotograph it for technical reasons (I changed some of the locations and used different film that better dealt with the mixed lighting) and to include the Christmas element. These negatives were drum scanned by West Coast Imaging (
www.westcoastimaging.com) and the prints you see in the final image are 22X22 digital prints. The digital printing allowed lighting issues to be better handled and helped for greater overall consistency in the printing. I chose the somewhat odd 22X22 size because the printing and framing price nearly doubled at 24X24.
These two were the only ones that suffered pretty obvious alignment problems, obviously I have nobody to blame but myself for this slopiness. Luckily it's not quite so obvious in the actual large prints.
Comments and criticisms welcome. One criticism I've heard repeatedly is that these don't look like condos where grandparents would live, I think that's born out of the fact Hollywood would rarely use an actual residence without modifiying it to look like how a particular type of person's residence is "supposed" to look.
Anyway I'm putting these on the web in order to spread the word that "someone's done that". No doubt someone will eventually come up with the same idea so I'm trying to stake some territory.