Three of My Neighbors Have Disappeared
Many rural areas around Chattanooga are poor, isolated, and experiencing cultural and infrastructural decay. Yet the geography of these communities is rich and strikingly beautiful. As cities, such as Chattanooga, in this region are booming and experiencing associated issues like housing crises and rampant property costs, the surrounding rural communities often suffer from declining population, lack of opportunities, unemployment, drug addiction and violence.
For this project, I set out to find images to tell this story. I included some landscapes, as the geography of this region contributes to the cultural ideologies that make this area of the Southeast so unique. And I wanted the viewer's perception rooted in this place's topography. While exploring the details of the urban decay I witnessed, I also became aware of the intrinsic violence in these communities. Bullet holes are everywhere, a stark reminder of how armed these communities are. These landscapes have a past of unimaginable violence: important Civil War battles took place here.
But the violence isn’t left in the past. The trauma survives. We see this in the deeply entrenched ideologies as Confederate flags fly more often than star-spangled banners. These communities have yet to confront the past in its entirety. As time has unfolded, a more modern vision of the world seems to have escaped them. Why have they failed to reconcile their past with a more equitable and diverse world? Perhaps the answer lies in the landscape: isolation prevents change and preserves historical trauma. Yet, paradoxically, it is through the emptying of the landscape that the past is vanishing as well.
This project’s title, Three of My Neighbors Have Disappeared, hints at the cultural deterioration these areas have been experiencing. The title was photographed on a church board and served as the central theme of this project. In this area, disappearing can happen in many ways. Disappearing around Chattanooga is not only a physical process but a psychological and cultural one. For this reason, I included only three portraits.
Photographs of the photo book
I wanted these images to remind viewers of a newspaper. Printed newspapers are becoming exceedingly rare and like these communities, they recall the past. Community papers also tend to exclusively cover local news, which could be another sign of isolation. As bigger cities have digitized their news, smaller towns continue to have printed papers. Perhaps another sign of stagnation and an inability to modernize culturally?
