We’ve been living in the historic suburb of Berwyn for almost 15 years now.  Some of the things that my family and I love about the area are its blue-collar roots (Berwyn is anything but snooty), the eclectic style of the city, its inhabitants and a certain kitschiness that seems to be ubiquitous without hitting you over the head.

Berwyn is a mix of families, Czechoslovakian, Latino, African-American as well as urban hipsters looking to escape to somewhere affordable and unique.  This diversity creates a blend of cultural flavors that add depth to the community.

The first parcel of land in the Berwyn township was deeded in 1846 and many of the homes that families occupy today are from the late 1800s.  The area is represented by everything from iconic bungalows to quaint Georgians, big Victorians as well as art deco apartment buildings. Our home is a brick two-flat circa 1873 that was converted from an apartment building into a single-family home.  

One day about seven years ago, I decided to go out for a walk around my neighborhood and take some photographs.  I had no preconceptions about what sort of images I was looking for, but I’m certainly aware that there is a consistent approach to most of my work.  It wasn’t too surprising that the film I developed was full of architectural images. Still, my first few outings were just sketches of an idea as a family of photographs began to reveal itself to me.  The vision for what would become this project, while developing fairly rapidly, would still take years to mature into the collection that I have today.

I often don’t fully know what a specific project is really about until I’ve made the final edit.  I think it’s kind of wonderful as an artist that your work can hold secrets from you, not revealing its true nature until you and the work have achieved some sort of resolution, a balance between what you want the work to be and what the work itself identifies as.

I imagined that the Berwyn work was simply going to be anthropological, a collection of postcards recording the cultural and stylistic identity of our small but diverse populace.  I found myself drawn to a very certain aesthetic, however, photographing at particular times of day under very specific lighting. I also tried to avoid cars, people, and anything else that would date the images to a distinct timeframe.  I believe I was working from an appreciation of the nostalgia that our neighborhood invokes.

I’ve edited the work into twenty images (nine of those are below) that I feel are the distillation of what this project is really about.  I’ll be producing the prints in the darkroom in platinum/palladium. While that is going to be very satisfying and a seemingly final culmination of years of work, I don’t believe it marks an end to this work.

Follow the series at https://www.instagram.com/cbarrett.berwyn/

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