Vinyl Village
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The modern American suburban subdivision is all about curved streets lined with cheerful homes faced in brick with multi-peaked roofs and prominent garages. It conjures images of tight-knit communities with children playing in yards. You almost expect Beaver Cleaver’s mom to come out with a plate of cookies.
But so many of these neighborhoods are built on former farmland, with power and gas lines running through. The houses themselves look good from the front, but around the sides and the back — frequently exposed because of how these neighborhoods are arranged — you see large swaths of cheap vinyl interrupted only by randomly placed windows.
We live in these places because they give us access to the good amenities these suburbs offer. Jim Grey takes an unflinching look at one such neighborhood in central Indiana in a photo essay that strips bare its banality. Grey made these images with film cameras on black-and-white film that he developed himself.
Vinyl Village by Jim Grey, 64 pages, $9.99, published via Amazon Kindle Publishing: