Real Estate #91265 1991

This is a photograph by Henry Wessel, probably taken with a handheld camera, capturing an everyday scene. It's just a house, right? But Wessel wasn't interested in the extraordinary; he found beauty in the mundane. I think about Wessel wandering through neighborhoods, pausing, framing a shot. What caught his eye? The light? The geometry of the roofs? Or just the feeling of a place? The flatness feels so 'real estate', so American. He’s showing us something real, not selling us a dream. The bland house, the patchy lawn, the shadows—it all feels so casual, unpretentious. Wessel was part of a generation of photographers who changed the way we look at the world. He taught us to pay attention to the ordinary, to find beauty in the everyday. And that, I think, is a pretty great legacy.