Picture Story: A Slice of Suburbia

Carolyn Drake's impressionistic take on the gated Palm Beach County community of Olympia is ambiguous but sharp-edged, compelling viewers to ponder whether the suburban development manifests the American dream, with its new, supersized homes and congenial neighbors, or exemplifies shallow American culture and consumerism.

"I didn't want it to be a marketing piece for the developer, but I didn't want it to be too ironic and critical, either," Drakes says of the project, published in December by the Palm Beach Post. "[The story] is open to your own interpretation."

The paper's presentation editor, Mark Edelson, suggested the story about a year ago, when Drake (one of PDN's 30 featured in this issue) was new to the paper and casting about for a project. Sprawl is changing the landscape, culture and demographics of South Florida, and Edelson had been trying to get a staff photographer interested in the topic for some time.

"There is constant construction here. I found it visually striking," says Drake, who had done a story about suburbia at her previous job with the Concord Monitor.

The challenge, Edelson explains, was avoiding pre-conceived notions about the story. "There was this tendency [during newsroom discussions] to talk about this false desire for materialistic goods, and how that's sort of warped. We decided, 'Don't go out with pre-conceptions. Let the story tell itself.'"

Drake's strategy was to focus on a single community. She approached several developers for access to their projects, but all declined. "I think they like being in control of the way they're represented," she says.

She was finally able to approach the residents of Olympia directly because construction there was still in progress, and the gates that otherwise would have kept Drake out were not yet in place.

"People there have a lot of pride. They've just moved in, and it's an upgrade from where they lived before, so they care a lot about their house and how they decorate it. A lot of people were excited about having someone document that."

They were willing to let Drake get only so close, though. She wanted images of people going about their private lives?getting ready for work, cleaning house, grocery shopping. Her subjects kept canceling appointments. "They didn't want to say no, but then they realized they didn't really want to do it."

Drake ended up using her hard-won time off the daily assignment schedule to cruise the neighborhood in search of other things to photograph.

For instance, she came across a block party with residents gathering to celebrate their street just because they liked living there so much. While there, she learned the neighbors had poker nights, which she eventually photographed. "It was hard to get access to private things, but people were always willing to have their parties photographed," she says.

She photographed whatever else she could find: kids playing in their yards, teenagers riding around on all-terrain vehicles, a Mommy and Me club gathering and an impromptu fireworks display. A few people invited her into their houses to take pictures.

Residents may have been eager for the attention, but some were also wary.

"I heard over and over again, 'Is this a positive story?' It's hard to answer that question, because if you're trying to do a documentary, it's not positive or negative, it's just telling something that's real," Drake says.

She captured images of congeniality and domestic contentment, but not without noticing that some of it seemed forced and artificial. For instance, one image shows a couple snuggling self-consciously beneath a large, framed portrait of themselves posing a kiss.

Drake also showed the diversity of the neighborhood, but suggested the cultural alienation of it, too. In a spacious living room without any furniture, several Indian women in traditional dress sit on folding chairs and chat while a boy in the background plays with a Game Boy.

Over the course of the project, Drake sat down with editors several times to report on her progress. "There was always that question in the background, 'What the heck is the story here?'"

"It ended up being an exploration of this place, not a narrative that has a literal beginning, middle and end," she says.

The story appeared across six pages in the paper's lifestyle section, as well as online at <www.palmbeachpost.com>. (see the 'Housing Boom' feature in the Special Reports section). Readers didn't offer much reaction, but Olympians themselves had a mixed response.

One subject criticized some of the image selections with terms such as "terrible," "weird," and "so dark," then went on to say with good cheer, "Everybody loved the story. It really put our development in a nice light." Another said, "I thought the story was great. It was honest. Most people liked it, but some of the neighbors thought it wasn't flattering."