This collage of photographs is an effort to document, translate, and archive the rapid gentrification unfolding in front of us as a community in my neighborhood of Church Hill North here in Richmond, VA. It is the intention of this work to reinterpret and rethink the environment we see changing around us increasingly everyday as corporations and greedy landlords buy up the homes that have been in the community for generations of families and convert them into ugly and bizarrely constructed gentrifying houses. There is only one way to view this displacement and that is as violence against the Black community that calls this area home. This violence is not only perpetuated by private companies but supported by the government and its corrupt policies and corporate interests. Seeing local families being pushed out of their homes and watching the destruction of long standing architecture to make way for overpriced buildings that look like shipping containers has forced me to try and make sense of the horrors of gentrification through the medium of analog photography. I found it to be the most suitable format because of the step-by-step processes required to take an image from the camera, onto film, and finish with a black and white darkroom print which reminded me of the process-based methods by which the neighborhood is being gentrified. The black and white imagery is appropriate for capturing the fleetingly brief moment in time that everything around us looks exactly as it does, until it is receding, revealing, and repeating again tomorrow.
Receding, Revealing, Repeating is an ongoing multi-media project that I intend to carry with me into the years as I move to new cities and become ingrained in more communities. To follow my work you can find me on Instagram at @deentheebean
