Tenement

James Casebere’s subjects, constructed for the camera, begin as simple tabletop sculptures. He then lights and composes these models to convey a moody atmosphere and an ambiguity of scale. The final photographs blur the boundaries between reality and artifice, familiarity and abstraction. They challenge conventional notions of documentary photography. In this image, Casebere creates a generic “tenement” building, stripped to its simplest form, to suggest a generalized symbol of poverty and home.