Tract House #4 1971

Lewis Baltz made this photograph, Tract House #4, sometime in the twentieth century. It is a black and white image of a plain suburban house, one of many, I imagine. The grey tones are quite uniform, the texture of the stucco is grainy and unyielding, making the house look like it was built from sand. A little bit like those sand mandalas that Buddhist monks create, before wiping them away. What is photography, after all, but a kind of wiping away? What was there is no longer there, only an image remains. Look at the blank windows, so empty and still, like eyes that can't see. Baltz has made an image of a building, not as a home or a place of warmth and comfort, but as a mute, indifferent object, like a sculpture. It reminds me of the stark, formal photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher, but this feels sadder. It's a portrait of loneliness and modern anomie.