Tract House #9 1971

Curator: Looking at this photograph by Lewis Baltz, "Tract House #9," created in 1971, what springs to mind for you? Editor: Utterly deadpan. Like a police mugshot, but for architecture. Or, I guess, the ghost of architecture since it's just a monochrome brick wall and part of a featureless concrete facade. Brrr! Cold, you know? Curator: Well, that’s partially the point. Baltz was cataloging, really, documenting these mass-produced suburban developments sprouting across America at that time. Notice the title itself— "Tract House" speaks to that standardization, this anonymity. Baltz seems interested in the aesthetics of industrial, banal space. Editor: Banal is spot on. Like someone extracted all the joy from construction. But I think there’s a sly humor here. A white brick rectangle slap-bang in the middle...the kind of suburban dreams all boxed up. There is geometry at play here, even. Curator: True. The geometric form does bring to mind hard-edge painting and even minimalism, a detachment. Perhaps Baltz highlights the inherent contradiction. These houses are built as "homes", intimate spaces, but the development itself fosters alienation. Look at the monochrome—the bricks all look identical, merging. There’s little to differentiate this one space from the thousands surrounding it. Editor: Makes me think of cultural memory, though—like visual white noise. Suburban architecture of this type might have evolved, but hasn't truly disappeared either. Curator: Absolutely! These images speak volumes about cultural continuity. Suburbia may evolve, but we haven't really shed the foundational psychological imprints these designs represent. Editor: I leave feeling melancholic—and also relieved that, artistically, you can still make something starkly striking out of…nothing much at all, a forgotten piece of brick and cement. Curator: An image for our times. Precisely because of how stark, haunting and understated the view turns out to be. Thanks!