Brian Center
Spruce Pine, NC
The summer of 2015 I spent two weeks at Penland in North Carolina for a documentary photography workshop. Penland felt like a liberal bastion among a conservative rural environment. To better understand the surrounding community I spent every day for two weeks at the Brian Center for nursing care in Spruce Pine. As I was living in this modular dorm like environment, I was interested in investigating the modulation of personal spaces within institutional living in the greater community. In these compartmentalized and singular spaces I documented the ways in which the individual person was represented. With only the illusion of privacy and personal space, how do the objects around them represent their history and selves? What objects speak more to placating their current status verses telling the story of their past? While working with the nursing home it was very important to me that I photograph the people with a sense of respect and integrity while still speaking to stagnation of their daily experience.
The summer of 2015 I spent two weeks at Penland in North Carolina for a documentary photography workshop. Penland felt like a liberal bastion among a conservative rural environment. To better understand the surrounding community I spent every day for two weeks at the Brian Center for nursing care in Spruce Pine. As I was living in this modular dorm like environment, I was interested in investigating the modulation of personal spaces within institutional living in the greater community. In these compartmentalized and singular spaces I documented the ways in which the individual person was represented. With only the illusion of privacy and personal space, how do the objects around them represent their history and selves? What objects speak more to placating their current status verses telling the story of their past? While working with the nursing home it was very important to me that I photograph the people with a sense of respect and integrity while still speaking to stagnation of their daily experience.
