James Casebere’s Ideal Suburb

The suburb is the heart of America, but its meaning is the exact opposite of what we would call a suburb. In America, the movement is made up of the heart of the cities to the suburb during Americans’ social progression. Each dreams of their home in the suburbs. In the television series “Friends,” don’t Monica and Chandler finish by leaving New York?

In his series “House,” introduced by Daniel Templon, the American photographer James Casebere is interested in this fantasy of his compatriots. He invents a suburb that can be released as a Sam Mendes film.

In this work, the topic of which had been at the heart of the economic crisis of the last three years, James Casebere recreated an ideal suburb in Duchess County, a district north of New York, along the Hudson River. He created models of houses and photographed them as if he had been the demiurge at all hours of the day. Humans are absent in his images. There is only their dream of colored houses, placed on their well-maintained grass lawns. Beware of he who lets the grass grow. He would be prosecuted for daring to threaten the neighborhood’s property values.

This work is very cinematic. It falls within the category of Jeff Wall and Gregory Crewdson. But it could also be associated with Cindy Sherman or Richard Prince. James Casebere, who began by studying sculpture, made models for 30 years, with the most modest means possible. Architecture is one of his favorite themes. He had also recreated the bunker under the Reichstag and a factory where black slaves worked, work that was both poetic and disturbing. Like his peaceful homes of Dutchess County, where life seems to have stopped.