Wedding Portrait (prop), 2008

Fascinated by the aggressive and over-the-top building and marketing of real estate in Arizona, Scott Lizama began photographing the extravagant interiors of model homes for sale. While photographing this series, the housing market collapsed, and the visual evidence of the Arizona construction boom was everywhere. The development companies, who had once tried to build as many houses as possible into their purchased plots, had gone bankrupt. These companies abandoned their projects mid-construction, forcing home owners with devalued new purchases to live next to half-built projects, and many acres of land with subdivision infrastructure in place, but no dwellings on them. These photographs depict both the crass facade of material wealth used to sell these houses, and the remains of what the housing market collapse left behind.
Scott Lizama is a photographer and PhD student in environmental psychology at the City University of New York and an adjunct faculty member at Parsons The New School for Design in New York city.

Gold Bathroom (with cinder block wall), 2008

 

Wild West Bedroom Motif, 2008

 

Empty Wine Glasses and Plaster Cinnamon Buns, 2008

 

Barbie Bedroom, 2008

 

Fake Cupcakes (with pinched cherry), 2008

 

Houses Designed to Maximize Space, 2010

 

Finish Them @ Least (abandoned single-story), 2010

 

Abandoned Subdivision: The Bridges at Gilbert, 2010

 

Abandoned two-story (with boarded up garage), 2010

 

Tags: Abandonment, Arizona, City University of New York, Developers, environmental psychology, Exurbs, financial crisis, foreclosure, mortgage crisis, Parsons The New School for Design, Real Estate Investors, Scott Lizama, speculators, Suburbs, Urban Design

This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2012 at 12:00 pm ET by Frank Webster and is filed under Architecture, Conceptual, Documentary, Fine Art, Interiors, Landscape, News, Outdoor, Personal, Photojournalism.