Meter's Up

My photography course required me to do a project titled “ublic”. One of my subjects for this project became public housing and utility. In Columbia we have hundreds of single family homes that are decades old and over time have been converted into multi-family rental properties.

Overstuffed with residents and for the most part neglected; these buildings and their surroundings tell such stories.

The gas meters on the outside of this house looked so beautiful to me. The way the pipes seem to creep from the ground up the sides of the home living in symbiosis with the ivy.

However, my intrigue didn’t start at the dynamic color and shading on the units. It was when I noticed the two missing meters. At some point the owners of this building were intending to cram two more renters into the building. Wow.