It is the documentation on the current process of gentrification happening in the Rainier Valley neighborhood of Seattle. Gentrification is the process of renewal and rebuilding following the influx of middle class or affluent people into deteriorating neighborhoods often displacing its poorer residents. “Gentrification: A South Seattle Story” engages those living in the neighborhood through open and intimate discussion. I’m pulling text from these conversations, as well as from the press to use as a tool of representation, friction, and personal opinion. The subject matter involves racial and social issues, both of which continue to be an uneasy topic to openly discuss about. I hope to explore the effects of gentrification and how the process of change affects these individuals who live and work in South Seattle. After visiting each conversation, I collage and appropriate statements and excerpt them onto an interrelating photograph taken in the neighborhood. The intimate relationship of text and photography creates a friction between the distant stories of those effected by gentrification and the visual aesthetics of the neighborhood. The work has a lack of immersion due to the surface distortion; the viewer is being forced to work harder to enter the piece – the personal representations of those affected by gentrification.

[CONTINUING PROJECT]