71 Photos of Richmond, Virginia
75 Photos of Richmond, ordered geographically in clockwise motion. Starting on Chamberlyne Avenue, through the North side of town (Highland Park,) into the East (Church Hill,) to the South, back towards the center, and a little out on the West End. My effort is to capture the daily life of the working class in Richmond.
Taking a break.
Housing for the working class can be so dismal: A, B, C, D.
Despite the appearance, some guys were working on a car in there.
There's some kids playing here, but it's hard to see without enlarging the photo.
These two photos are of Mosby Court, a public housing complex above the Richmond City Jail, courthouse, and and some light industry. There's 458 units of housing here. I've just read another blog of a nearby resident who purchased an old house (there's plenty) and is refurbishing it. He has a post on Mosby Court as well, and casually mentions that owing to problems, it - 458 units of scarce, affordable housing - should simply be demolished and replaced with single-family homes. Such homes would obviously hold far fewer people, and would be much more expensive to own or rent. How callous.
"Marketplace #14"
This block looks hideous so I thought it would be fair to show one building being rebuilt. That Tyvek is $150-$200 a roll!
Siding installation.
Moody's Community Ma_ _ ?
Private apartments, sealed up. They actually look to be in quite good condition (siding seems fairly new, along with windows.)
A telephoto from atop the large railroad trestle near the James River in Richmond. The traffic now is drastically reduced from the days when the railroad had the gall to build this several mile long, well-built, elevated trestle.
How many other cities have mobile homes in them? The giant warehouse complex in the backround appears to be unused; perhaps it is to be for tobacco and requires little labor or transportation.
Baseball field.
These are all photos of a scrap yard at the end of Chamberlyne Avenue in Richmond. Alot of empty truck trailers were being cut up and shipped out, but all sorts of metal, including scrounged metal, is evidently processed.
This is the entrace to Lowe's. Every morning guys gather around here, sitting on the ledge, while contractors and others who need day labor pick and choose. A temp agency around the corner is little different. I've seen a huge line of people standing outside there at dawn hoping for work. Many are homeless, and the jobs offer little.
Taking a break.
Housing for the working class can be so dismal: A, B, C, D.
Despite the appearance, some guys were working on a car in there.
There's some kids playing here, but it's hard to see without enlarging the photo.
These two photos are of Mosby Court, a public housing complex above the Richmond City Jail, courthouse, and and some light industry. There's 458 units of housing here. I've just read another blog of a nearby resident who purchased an old house (there's plenty) and is refurbishing it. He has a post on Mosby Court as well, and casually mentions that owing to problems, it - 458 units of scarce, affordable housing - should simply be demolished and replaced with single-family homes. Such homes would obviously hold far fewer people, and would be much more expensive to own or rent. How callous.
"Marketplace #14"
This block looks hideous so I thought it would be fair to show one building being rebuilt. That Tyvek is $150-$200 a roll!
Siding installation.
Moody's Community Ma_ _ ?
Private apartments, sealed up. They actually look to be in quite good condition (siding seems fairly new, along with windows.)
A telephoto from atop the large railroad trestle near the James River in Richmond. The traffic now is drastically reduced from the days when the railroad had the gall to build this several mile long, well-built, elevated trestle.
How many other cities have mobile homes in them? The giant warehouse complex in the backround appears to be unused; perhaps it is to be for tobacco and requires little labor or transportation.
Baseball field.
These are all photos of a scrap yard at the end of Chamberlyne Avenue in Richmond. Alot of empty truck trailers were being cut up and shipped out, but all sorts of metal, including scrounged metal, is evidently processed.
This is the entrace to Lowe's. Every morning guys gather around here, sitting on the ledge, while contractors and others who need day labor pick and choose. A temp agency around the corner is little different. I've seen a huge line of people standing outside there at dawn hoping for work. Many are homeless, and the jobs offer little.
posted by - at 5/21/2007
6 Comments:
The quickest method of boring the reader is to tell everything.
-Voltaire
Tell everything? I captioned 5-10 photos out of 70, and most of those captions were quite simple and brief. In fact, of all the posts I've ever done this one has the least information! Do you know "everything" I was viewing and thinking over the several days that I took these photos?
Or perhaps you are complaining about photos that seem similar? In that case, some have important differences that are evident with a close look, while others have different asthetics that seemed worthy of showing.
I want to hear criticism, but please make it substantial.
Nice photos, so many pictures from around Richmond concentrate on the architecture and miss the people. If you have a flickr account, it'd be very cool if you'd add them to the Church Hill flickr pool.
I think that you may have referenced my house restoration blog here, though if so you may have misinterpreted the sentiment of my post. I do live over near Mosby and would like to see it redeveloped as mixed-income single family housing . This would house fewer people, which I think would be the benefit to both the surrounding neighborhood and the public housing residents. The concentration of poverty, as the phrase goes, hasn't really worked out for anyone. I don't think that folks should be kicked out into the streets, but I do think that the mid-20th century approach to subsidized housing hasn't lived up to its promise and really needs to be reconsidered.
For what it is worth, I walk these streets everyday. I work in one of the neighborhood schools. What would be callous would be to let another generation of kids grow up in the projects as they are now.
This is some of my favorite work of Richmond. It's good that someone would concentrate on photographing the underbelly of Richmond, not just the architechure and the beuaty like John M said. I grew up in southside Richmond my whole life and this is the stuff you see every day, but never in media.
They want it to look like they got us under control.No media about anything bad that goes on.All the drugs,gangs,and other stuff they don't show it.Trying to hide it aint gonna stop it.
this is not an accurate portrail of the "working class" in richmond. and its not an accurate representation of richmond as a whole. this is a very small, poor, and run down part of richmond. the working class actually have jobs and do not feed off welfare. this looks more like a photo blog of poverty in richmond's innercity. as for the photography... poor sight lines, no use of depth of field, lack of composition, sloppy.
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