Ryan Boatright: Exurbia
Monday, July 16, 2007
(from “Exurbia”), 2005
© Ryan Boatright

(from “Exurbia”), 2005
© Ryan Boatright
Ryan Boatright’s project entitled Exurbia considers the formal commonnality of design inherent in the architecture of middle to upper-middle class American houses. Ryan refers to these structures are being “fortress-like,” and is interested in how the builders construct homes of similar design for “occupants who in turn conform to neighborhood codes and restrictions.”
When I envision familial relationships, I picture the spaces around them, the spaces that mold them. For twenty-one years, I lived in the same suburban neighborhood in Louisville, Kentucky. I vividly remember these surroundings. Unfortunately, as I departed, my parents relocated to a large exurban neighborhood twenty-three miles outside of the city; because my definition of ‘home’ was altered, I began to critique my parents’ situation and the American phenomenon of moving “up and out.”
See more from this series here.

July 17th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
They are quite extraordinary.
July 17th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
I don’t know.
Sometimes I wonder just how many photography projects criticizing suburban cultural/architectural homogeneity we really need.
March 13th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
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