Model Home, Phillips Ranch, California 1984

This photograph, taken by Joe Deal, of a ‘Model Home, Phillips Ranch, California’, captures a very specific kind of nowhere, somewhere between raw potential and crushing disappointment. I can imagine Deal, setting up his camera in this half-finished landscape. It’s a portrait, almost a caricature, of suburban development: the blank-faced house, the promising mound of earth, the sad, boxy car. There’s a flatness to the light, a lack of contrast, which gives everything an equal, slightly drab weight. It’s as if he’s saying, ‘Here it is. This is what we’re doing.’ I think he’s inviting us to consider the choices we make, the landscapes we create, and the stories we tell ourselves about progress and the good life. He shows us how one thing echoes another – the form of the mountain repeats the form of the pile of dirt, the house mimics the car - until everything rhymes in a slightly off-key, unsettling way. Ultimately, Deal's photo serves as a mirror, reflecting back our own complex relationship with the places we call home.