Real Estate #902719 1990

This photograph by Henry Wessel offers a view of a nondescript building, likely captured on film stock and printed with darkroom techniques. This use of photographic materials is important, because they can be easily overlooked. Wessel’s works often showed the built environment of the American West, and the materials and the ways they are put together is critical to his project. The construction of this garage, clad in what looks like painted timber, would have involved carpenters, painters, and other tradespeople. The concrete driveway and surrounding tract homes would be the work of other skilled laborers. The result is not so much a handcrafted object but a mass-produced one, multiplied across the suburban landscape. Wessel's straightforward approach, with attention to light, texture, and form, invites us to consider the amount of collective effort involved in its realization, revealing the social and economic underpinnings of this ordinary scene.