Photo by "The Artful Agent," Self-Portrait With Bathroom Fixtures
Somebody in the local real estate biz was doing a bit of research on Minneapolis city policy regarding boarding up vacant houses. And naturally he stumbled upon my blog...
Our email conversation resulted in him sharing some photos of the interior of 420 31st Ave. N., which used to be a real troublesome crack house on the block until it got (repeatedly) boarded up.
Apparently this guy takes a lot of pictures--he says more than 300 a week!--as he documents conditions inside empty, foreclosed homes. He sees lots of abandoned toys and finds it "heartbreaking." For some reason, he says, "They always leave the kid's toys."
He offered to share some of the photos with me and started with one of my favorite properties, 420 31st Ave. N., which he described as "across the street from the 415 lawsuit house." (The lawsuit against CitiMortgage has received national publicity, so "415 lawsuit house" is a nickname that makes sense)
One thing I noticed right away: this agent has the eye of an artist. His pictures adequately document the conditions inside the houses, of course, but he seems to be consciously or unconsciously "composing" his pictures for aesthetic impact. Since I'm not going to use his real name I have decided to dub him "The Artful Agent."
Enjoy, Johnny Northside readers, enjoy!
2 comments:
They always leave the kids toys because .... that's toys for tots at work - they get the toys for free, don't spend any of their own money on them, so why waste the effort to take them with, they will just get new, free toys at their new place. Leave someone else to clean up the mess.
Well, if I was the one cleaning up the mess, I'd be giving the good toys to a program like...um, Toys For Tots.
I'm an environmentalist. No sense wasting good toys.
But my theory is the adults are so stressed out that the last thing on anybody's mind is making sure Barbie manages to come along during the evacuation.
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