Real Estate #90912 1990

This photograph was taken by Henry Wessel, sometime before 2018. It shows a house, somewhere in the USA. The house radiates a feeling of loneliness. It’s a pale yellow, with fake stone cladding at the bottom. It could be in California, it could be anywhere. I wonder what Wessel was thinking when he took this picture. Was he interested in the particularities of this house, or did it simply stand as a symbol of a generic home? It’s a strangely sad image. The colors are muted, and the light is flat. It reminds me a little of some of the houses Ed Ruscha photographed. The banality of the subject matter is striking. It’s not a grand house, it’s just a regular home. And in that regularity, there’s a sense of both comfort and despair. It’s as if Wessel is saying, this is it, this is the American dream. A small house, on a small plot of land, under a big sky.