Sightlines 02
Alesi shoots mostly when cloud cover offers a consistent, diffuse light — challenging conditions in Austin where bright sunlight is often the norm. With their lack of sharp shadows and the flatness of light and composition, Alesi’s images have a visual silence that’s almost dispassionate. Or perhaps even deadpan. Except that these images are not at all dispassionate or deadpan. They speak of economic inequality and the unchecked consumption embodied in over-large amenity-packed houses. They speak of erasure and a disregard of a place and its history.
Yet Alesi’s images capture a resiliency too, the modest bungalows and their idiosyncratic yards holding their own. Flower pots line up on front porches. A concrete birdbath stakes out a corner close to the sidewalk. Sporting an orange hue and bright turquoise trim, a one-story home remains resolute between two towering newcomers.
Since starting “The Proximity Series” Alesi spends perhaps one day a week documenting his neighborhood. But he often finds it particularly compelling when a house is in the process of being razed or moved. Then he returns every day to witness the erasure. It’s not just about capturing a potent visual moment. Witnessing the change, he says, “allows me a deeper connection to my neighborhood and its land.”
Alesi has no plans to end the series, at times feeling at its service, as if the work has taken on a drive of its own. “I’ve been unwilling to let the change happen without creating my archive of it,” Alesi admits. But the inability to let go of his project provides him with a existential benefit as it were. Says Alesi: “It allows me a space to understand that change is a process, and I am a part of that change.”