Anaheim, California 1983

Joe Deal made this photograph called Anaheim, California, sometime during his career, with a camera and film, of course. I’m thinking about Joe setting up his camera, and what it must have been like looking through the lens. You know, that’s how we really ‘see’ things, by framing them. It's a kind of staging. The building is monumental, so boxy and grey, with this raw patch of excavated land in front of it. A lone figure is bent over, maybe tending to the garden? Or inspecting the foundations? There is something bleak about the geometry, this hard, lonely landscape. The house is like a stage set, almost theatrical with that balcony. It reminds me a little of some of the other documentary photography happening at the time - a sort of ‘New Topographics’ movement that really looked unflinchingly at the built environment. It’s like Joe is saying, ‘Hey, look at this. This is what we’re doing.’ And that takes real guts, you know? It's like he’s trying to have a conversation about our impact on the land.