Signs of Life, but No Proof

The suburbs have always had a sense of suffocation with their overcrowded houses and self-confined people. With fences to keep out wandering legs and observant eyes, this feeling of isolation becomes magnified. Unsettling feelings surround the empty streets enhanced by the absence of people in a small and overpopulated place. You know the saying: Nothing ever changes in the suburbs. Well it's true! People leave and get replaced by others who are just as reclusive and solitary as their predecessors, it's a never-ending cycle.

I’ve always felt like an outsider here and it's always led to me questioning so many things like: Is this a feeling that will follow me for as long as I live here? Am I actually the reason for these feelings of isolation? Have I lived here so long that I have become a part of this endless cycle of seclusion? These questions have not found their answers and they probably never will. In the movies, the suburbs are all about community, prosperity, and safety but this town isn’t like the movies. It's not a typical small town where everyone knows your name since you're actually a part of the community and it never will be. The suburbs weren’t designed to be like that, they were designed to have distinctions between property lines with their seemingly “cute” white picket fences. They were supposed to be a place that represented the American ideals of homeownership, education, low crime and complete autonomy. Now this very idea is what makes them so sealed off from the rest of the world. This project looks to document: a suburban community, the quiet that inhabits it, as well as the feelings of seclusion and isolation that have been a part of the suburbs since their inception.