Art & Abandon: T.J. Proechel’s “Dream House”

By Benjamin Davis Brockman

for The Fiddleback

Please check out the full feature in the February issue of The Fiddleback.

From 2008 to 2009, Photographer T.J. Proechel worked as an Real Estate Owned Contractor at the height of his native Minnesota’s home foreclosure crisis.  While this wasn’t his foremost ambition after graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Photography from Baltimore’s Maryland Institute College of Art, he found jobs back in his native Twin Cites difficult to come by.  Little did he know this line of work was about to provide him with a unique creative vantage point on a grave national issue.  Proechel’s ongoing series of photographs depict the sobering truths of foreclosures, without being overtly political, or casting a personal agenda on his subjects.  The imagery in “Dream House” is immediately tragic, though often humorous, and clever, acting as a unique form of documentary.  Proechel’s eye catches the nuances of the stories of real people in difficult times, frequently without using the people themselves as subjects. His work begs many questions about the nature of the documentary in photographs, and the process of creative discovery.  In Winter of 2011, I humbly approached my colleague about an interview.

T.J .Proechel

BDB: Many of your photographs have an austere, peaceful quality to them.  How do you decide on an aesthetic approach in portraying such a complex social subject?

TJP: This project wasn’t pre conceived. It really grew out of what I was doing and seeing on a daily basis. I don’t ever remember thinking about the kind of images I wanted to make. There were certain motifs that kept reoccurring though: beds, distressed rooms, homes at night, etc.

I did my best not to make it overly sentimental. When I was making this work there wasn’t a lot of other pictures of the foreclosure crisis to look at. I was just making pictures, making images that were compelling and images, which related to my experience. At that time I was in a pretty dark period of my life, partly because I was working in these depressing foreclosed homes and partly for other reasons, I think that bleeds through into the pictures a bit.

Although I didn’t really think of it as a project, until I’d been making images for a long time, making these images was, at the time, the only thing I was excited about. In retrospect it is the only thing that validates, what otherwise would have been a wasted year.

11th Ave., St. Paul, MN

BDB: How does humor enter in to your work?  Is it something you look for or something that you have a keen eye for?

TJP: I’m a big fan of humor. I hope the images I was making weren’t overly ironic. In photography irony is often the only way humor is expressed, which I find mind numbing boring. This is partly because it has been so over used and partly because so it is so directed and it’s meaning can be so closed. I’m far more interested in a photography that is ambiguous and one who’s meaning isn’t right on the surface.

The work is I’m making now is more like that and there’s not a ton of humor in it. On the other hand humor can be a great entrance point for a lot of people. It can be a very affective way to draw people in and then get them to deal with other issues I’m trying to bring to bear.

Hazel Ave., White Bear, MN

BDB: Can you talk a bit about working with the homeowners that you met?  What was their attitude toward being documented? 

TJP: Well, in many ways I don’t think I could have made this project in any other place than MN. My position is a within this project is a bit of a precarious one. Although I was working on the project and outside of it, I was also ultimately hired by the banks to take care of these houses after the homeowners left.

The reason I think this project was different in MN, is because MN deals far more humanely with people who get foreclosed on. By the time I would meet anyone who I photographed they would have known for 9 months that they were going to have to move out of their house. So more often than not, people were resigned to it.

BDB: Would you describe your creative process as an act of discovery?  Do you set out with certain things you really want to find or depict, or do things occur to you as you work?

TJP: Photographing out in the world is always an act of discovery. I don’t really make lists of things that I want to photograph, but I do always have in my head photographs that I want to make. Most of those things don’t ever get made, but I always have them there and they inform the actual pictures I make.

23rd Ave., Minneapolis, MN

BDB: The title of this series is “Dream House.”  How did you come to choose this title?  Did this inform your aesthetic?

TJP: Well, Dream House was and is a working title. I don’t really remember coming up with it, but it kinda just stuck. I really don’t like the title actually. It’s a bit too tongue in cheek. In a way I feel like it makes light of a situation, which doesn’t deserve that sort of flippant lightness,

It’s stuck on there for now, but eventually I’ll change it. 

BDB: There is certain ethereality to your images, some of which is inherent in the spaces as you find them.  How deliberate are those metaphorical connections?

TJP: I’m not sure that I would describe the project as ethereal. There’s a certain eerie quality or creepiness, which is often inherent in just being in these spaces. But there are certain images within the project, where I’m trying to make reference to larger cultural structures, which created the foreclosure crisis. I may be the only one who can see those, but those images are important to me. Even if those references aren’t readily on the surface, I think it creates a tone for the project.

BDB: How do you feel about this quote from Robert Polidori: “My belief is that you should take stills of what doesn’t seem to move, and take movies or videos of [what] does.”

TJP: To be honest I don’t think much of Polidori, I think his work is Google street view with a large format camera. He seems to have no discernment of what’s interesting and what’s not. And it’s not in a kind of Egglestonian democratic forest kinda way, which points to the everyday and asks us to mediate on it. Polidori is interested primarily in the exotic and foreign, but renders them indistinguishable from one to the next. He’s an incessant photographer, but after looking at his work I never feel like I’ve learned anything new, rather his work seems to be invested in reinforcing prevailing narratives.

 Although thinking of it in that context peeks my interest a little bit. I could read an essay about the relationship between Google Street view and Polidori and be convinced, but his work doesn’t move my meter even a little bit. He does make pretty pictures though, that does make me slightly jealous.

I think you only need to look at Edgerton’s work to know how bunk that Polidori quote is. To my mind there’s nothing that doesn’t move. Everything is in constant motion. I think the basic roll of photography is to stop motion and point towards what’s important.

Reaney Ave., St. Paul, MN

BDB: What are your interests in the documentary (either in film or photo journalism)?  What do you see as the role of the documentarian?  Does he have certain responsibilities?

TJP: That’s a huge question. I believe the documentarian does and doesn’t have certain responsibilities. It’s important to note here that historically and presently the majority of documentary work is done about poor, most often third world brown skin people. This obsession over the disenfranchised and poor is ingrained within ideology of photojournalism/photo documentary.

This history is vast, but hasn’t changed much since Jacob Riis made his photographs that are collected as “How the Other Half Lives”. In these photos Riis photographed the slums of New York and most famous young children who worked in textile plants. The difference between Riis and most modern photo documentarians is that Riis advocated for something specific. He advocated for “model tenements” and child labor laws. His work was specific and directed and had a tangible affect on the people he depicted.

Contemporary photojournalism is completely different. Unlike Jacob Riis who lived in the community he photographed, almost all photojournalist (including Robert Polidori and Andrew Moore) drops into a region spend two weeks there making pictures and then return home with a project. There is no activist or personal engagement with the subject. Those two things are not requirements for making compelling and engaged work, but what results from that way of working are tried and cliché images, which don’t bring to light anything new about the subject, but rather reinforce the given and present narrative. This is a problem that affects all of journalism and not photojournalism specifically.

I would say that the type of documentary that I try to make is done in the first person. Meaning that I’m interested in making project that I’m directly affected by. When making the foreclosure project it wasn’t a matter of finding a ’hot’ topic and then making a project about it. I never intended to make this project. I wasn’t even making a project I was just photographing the things that were around me.

This of course is not only way to make documentary projects, but I think it’s important to work towards a photojournalism, which is more open and doesn’t impose directed and narratives on subjects. This has happened in ways, but there’s a long way to go.

Virginia Ave., St. Paul, MN

BDB: What are you influences?  What art, music, or films drive you?

TJP:  I like lots of things. But, in this moment I’m most interested in Hennessey Youngman, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Joel Sternfeld, Taryn Simon, Pierre Huyghe, Judd Apatow, Allen Iverson, Gunter Grass, Ernest Hemingway, David Foster Wallace, Andy Kaufman, Eddie Murphy (Delirious), Louie C.K., Ted Sorensen, Sonic Youth, Paul Graham, Mike Tyson, and Oliver Chanarin and Adam Bloomberg

BDB: An earlier project featured on your website is about Baltimore.  What connections, if any, are there between these two series?  Each piece seems to have a very specific story.  What is you interest in those personal stories or are you more interested in the general social phenomena you address?

TJP: Baltimore is a scary city. I lived there for four years and although for the most part I avoided getting fucked up, I knew a lot of people who weren’t so lucky. I started doing that project after a taxi driver was shot outside of my apartment building. I lived right next Remington neighborhood at the time, which was one of the most violent in the city. But Baltimore’s different neighborhoods are very small - often 6 or 8 square blocks.

For the project I photographed all the sites of murders, which had taken place during the time I lived in that apartment. I collected all the text from police reports then went to the sites. I did the project to help myself conceptualize the neighborhood I was living in, but the pictures have been generously called memorials, which I liked to think that they are in some small way.

BDB: How do you see the advent of digital technology and social media affecting your methods?  In photography, is this liberating, or a detriment to medium?

TJP: It’s both. I’m a young enough photographer to have always had my work on the Internet. But the biggest thing I feel that it’s doing is forcing myself make photographs that are more legible for the web. This means making them very directed and stripped down. The less visual and conceptual images work far better on the Internet.

White Bear Ave., Woodbury, MN

BDB: Who is Adam Burroughs? 

TJP: “Adam Burroughs does not exist.” He is a con artist who swindled me out of money, while I was renovating a house for him and several investors.

BDB: Can you talk a little bit about what your doing now?  Is this project ongoing?  I read that you were doing some traveling between Saint Paul and Los Angeles.

TJP: I’m currently tracking down Adam Burroughs. I did my first trip last May and will do another this summer. I’m waiting to finish the project before I put any of it up on my website.

Proechel graduated with A Bachelor of Fine Art in Photography from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008.  He is a founding member of Chicago, Portland and New York based The Dreamboats Collective. He has exhibited nationally, and has been featured in numerous publications.  He is currently seeking his Master’s Degree in Photography at The University of Minnesota.  To read more about Proechel, see the complete series of Dream House photographs, and to keep posted on his quest to locate Adam Burroughs - check out his website: tjproechel.com.