My sister, Beth, has spent the past few years taking photos of run-down motels and the people who live in them. It’s been a long hard process for her. The photos are strong, beautiful and unflinchingly political. Beth has an exhibition in NYC that starts May 4th at the Redux Gallery and the same photos will be featured in the May issue of Fader magazine.
On a personal note: I’m so happy to see Beth’s star rising. She is so talented and has worked for so long to make this all happen. She has never once taken the easy route and gotten a “real” job taking hack/pop photos or some desk job. Beth’s work is gritty, beautiful, political and totally unconventionally her. They are a thesis of everything she is about with no compromises and no regrets. I am so happy to see her work taking on a life of it’s own, getting published and merited. It’s about time people start noticing her work.
Here’s the photo from her flyer and the press release which, I gotta say, almost made me cry it’s so good. It completely sums up Beth’s work and her working relationships with her subjects:
Home Sweet Home
Photographs by Beth FladungExhibition
May 4th, June 10, 2006
Opening Reception
May 4, 2006 6:30-8:30 pm
Redux Gallery and The Fader Magazine are pleased to present Beth Fladung’s first solo exhibition at Redux Pictures Gallery: 43 c-prints from the ongoing series, Home Sweet Home. The exhibition will open on Thursday, May 4th and close on Saturday, June 10th, with a reception for the artist on Thursday, May 4th from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
In 1998, Beth Fladung began working on a series of photographs that record the dramatic transition of the American Motel. Once icons of roadside America, motels have transformed into mostly immigrant-owned, low-income housing for the poor. For years, Fladung has traveled throughout the United States, photographing motels and their residents in neglected cities such as Mobile, Alabama, Riviera Beach, Florida, Gallup, New Mexico, and Rahway, New Jersey. Focusing on forgotten routes and local highways where roadside communities and motels were built before interstate construction left them behind, Fladung found scores of long-term residents - some of who were subsidized by welfare, but many who simply had no other affordable housing options.
While these photographs portray a specific niche in American society, they also confront the current state of affairs and the lack of attention paid to the crises of poverty and housing in the United States. Fladung’s passion for social justice and her ability to connect with people become evident through her images, which capture the spirit of her subjects and never downplay the complexity or political overtone of the subject matter. Photographs such as a motel dresser stacked with a GED study book and Dr.Spock’s Guide to Parenting, a father wearing a parole anklet watching TV with his daughter, and a girl playing on an abandoned motel sign convey both sadness and hardship, yet at the same time, hope and resilience. Among motel residents Fladung discovered a common thread: the struggle to make a home and to create comfort and stability for themselves and their families in spaces that signify transience.
Beth Fladung was born in Philadelphia, PA, raised in Westchester, NY, Milwaukee, WI and Berkeley, CA. In 1999 she received a B.F.A. in photography at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles and she currently lives and works in New York City. Home Sweet Home is also featured in Fader’s photography issue this May. Publications in which Fladung’s work has appeared include Wax Poetics, Scratch, King, URB, and XXL.
You can find more of Beth’s work at her website: Mosbef.com
I just saw the pics on beth’s site. WOW! I agree, you have a pretty phenomenal sister.