House Calls: Intimate Portraits of Economic Survivors

Toni Schlesinger, the author of [2]Five Flights Up, [3] has spent the last year visiting and photographing the homes of people who have been hit by the economic crash—people who lost their money, their savings, their terrors, their dream-lives, and their pluck. Step inside their lives with "House Calls."

The Good Earth Album [4]: Single mom Rebecca Tuffey lives with her daughter, Elle, in Queens and frequents her community garden.

Previous "House Calls" albums:

The Belly of the Pig Album [5] The After the Storm Album [6]
The New Hungry Album [7]
The Goose Laid Them Album [8]
The Painted Lampshade Album [9]
The Lake Nervous Album [2]

After last year’s startling economic crash sideswiped just about every segment of the population, I began visiting people in their homes to talk about their lost money, their savings, their terrors, their dream-lives, and their pluck.

I saw designers, artists, poets, social workers, reverends, a cleaning person, a caretaker. I chose mostly people who were independent, working outside corporations and without any fixed affiliations. They are the most vulnerable and also those most free to speak publicly to the press.

A few common themes emerged—a newfound passion for the land, either for survival or cheerful solace, for example. Master plans for thrift included immediate, excessive budget cuts; taking in a boarder; and working harder, faster, and longer. People fretted about what they’d missed: Why didn’t I see it coming? They pondered the ironies: “There we were, working on a film about a con artist!” For some, an age-old question—whether art is still relevant—felt suddenly sharper.

One image was constant—the thought that we may no longer be living in only an apartment or a house, but inside the recession itself, a sort of economic architecture. On some days, a cave so dark; on others, a cave in which an opening appears where the light comes flooding in and we all go running out.