
The recession is still very close and absolutely remains a reality for many of my friends, so Kirk Crippens's
Foreclosure, USA photos currently on display at the
SFMOMA Artists Gallery in Fort Mason hit me directly in the heart. Photographed in Stockton, CA, in 2008 and 2009 when families were losing their houses left and right, Crippens's pictures capture details that become tragic in context: a child's beach ball floating across a stagnant swimming pool, carpet laid down on the floor of a garage to convert it into a makeshift living area, glow-in-the-dark stars on a ceiling right next to the bare wires of a disconnected light fixture. These are the remnants of people's lives. In his exterior shots Crippens also concentrates on the half-constructed pastel cul-de-sacs of American suburbia that in more prosperous times would have been populated by SUVs and soccer moms. Now nature reclaims the lots as they lie abandoned and unbought.