Inside California's Foreclosures

This article from Places reflects on these foreclosed spaces, which have been photographed by Douglas Smith.

"He focuses mostly on interiors and backyards, private spaces that tell us more about the human side of the crisis than the facades we can see from the sidewalk. Smith lives in a now much devalued neighborhood in Modesto, the foreclosure capital of California, where 1 in 14 housing units was foreclosed in 2010. After months of trying to get inside foreclosed homes, including some in his own neighborhood, Smith finally gained access through a realtor friend, and he has since photographed more than 50 properties throughout the Northern San Joaquin Valley. The former owners are known only to neighbors and tax records, but we see in Smith's images reminders of the people who lived there, traces of the stories they accumulated and the tokens they stored in shoeboxes, the pursuit of touchdowns and goals and salvation.

Smith's work attests to the deep influence of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, whose photographs documented the domestic toll of the Great Depression. His work, like theirs, straddles the line between art and photojournalism, between beauty and realism, exemplifying Susan Sontag's argument that "to photograph is to confer importance." Smith has taken the time to show us that stick-on stars and cut-out hearts on a pink wall are relevant to the American story."