I met Stacy Arezou Mehrfar several years ago when we were in a group show together. I've kept a mental note to check in on her work every so often. She has been working on the American Palimpsests series for a number of years now. It is a view into what the last couple of years have been like here in terms of the development boom in the US, and hopefully what we are going to leave behind. Here we share some photos from the series and a bit of where Stacy is right now in her life. What I love about the Conversation series is the stuff you don't always find when visiting an artist's site, reading their statement or bio. I've enjoyed the things Stacy chose to share about herself and think you will too.
Joliet, Illinois. July 2004 from This Was What There Was: American Palimpsests © Stacy Arezou Mehrfar
NP: Tell us a little about yourself.
SM: I lived in Manhattan for the majority of my adult life and I always assumed it would be home for better or worse. I was wrong. I married an Australian man and moved across the world to Sydney, Australia. Now I have two homes and consider myself bi-hemispherical. As a child my favorite places in town were the library and Burger King. At the library I devoured as many books as my little brain could handle; at Burger King I consumed as many chicken sandwiches I could get my hands on. Later in life I found that I could only really concentrate on one book at a time, and BK chicken sandwiches weren't as great as I had cracked them up to be. I have had many nicknames throughout my life- but I am most nostalgic for the names I was born with. I was named Stacy after my brother Adam's first crush. He was 7 years old when I was born and somehow convinced my parents that Stacy was the most beautiful name in the world. Arezou, my middle name, translates to "wish" from Farsi. My father invented the name Mehrfar when he moved to NY. He felt that his last name wasn't trendy enough for a doctor working in the US, so he took two names from prominent Iranian families and put them together.
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Giraffe. Frankenmuth, Michigan. July 2006 from This Was What There Was: American Palimpsests © Stacy Arezou Mehrfar
NP: How did you discover photography?
SM: I am the youngest in my family. I have two brothers who are significantly older than me, so growing up it was as if I was an only child in the house. To entertain myself I would play with the family photographs and make up stories about them. I especially loved the photos from before I was born. I would sit for hours and play pretend- making up stories about when, where and what they were doing. As I grew older, I became obsessed with documenting all our family moments- carrying the camera and video camera with me wherever we all went.
Automobile. Falls City, Nebraska. July 2005 from This Was What There Was: American Palimpsests © Stacy Arezou Mehrfar
NP: Where do you find inspiration?
SM: I find inspiration in the usual suspects: memory, dreams, home, family, friends, classic art, contemporary art, music, poetry, film, TV, current events, fiction and old contact sheets. The blank screen on my iMac has even inspired me on occasion.
What I live for is the moment I've been hit by inspiration. My head starts to spin like a tornado, my brain moves as fast as the roadrunner and I can hardly get my thoughts out fast enough. It happens when I see something old like new, when I enter a new space that feels like I have been there before, or when I am half asleep and half awake.
Stairway. Willis, Michigan. July 2006 from This Was What There Was: American Palimpsests © Stacy Arezou Mehrfar
Magnolia, Texas. April 2006 from This Was What There Was: American Palimpsests © Stacy Arezou Mehrfar
Gas Station. Cumming, Virginia. June 2008 from This Was What There Was: American Palimpsests © Stacy Arezou Mehrfar
NP: How did this project come about?
SM: In May 2003, Naomi Harris and I traveled to Las Vegas together for 3 weeks. We stayed in a house in a new development called Southern Highlands. I was amazed at the new landscape of suburban Vegas- there was so much freshly planted grass, you could almost forget you were in the desert. At the time there were something like 4,000 people migrating to Vegas per month. New neighborhoods were sprouting everywhere. I started photographing "American Palimpsests" during that time.
Lago Vista, Texas. April 2006 from This Was What There Was: American Palimpsests © Stacy Arezou Mehrfar
The chapter "This Was What There Was:" came from a re-edit of my film. When I realized that I would be moving to Sydney, I started to scan all my images from the project. In that process I realized that I had been shooting another side of suburbia all along. The project has grown into a two-part body of work: "This Was What There Was:" delineates the debilitating effects sprawl has had on older neighborhoods, and "American Palimpsests" discusses the sterilization of the natural landscape into new suburbia.
Mr Dee’s Fish. Fredericksburg, Virginia. June 2007 from This Was What There Was: American Palimpsests © Stacy Arezou Mehrfar
Many of the new developments I photographed for American Palimpsests now lie empty, and the subprime crisis has left the development of many neighborhoods incomplete. Based on the current state of older American suburbs, I wonder what will become of those empty new suburbs in 30 years time.
Cumming, Georgia. June 2008 from This Was What There Was: American Palimpsests © Stacy Arezou Mehrfar
NP: Whats next?
SM: At the moment, my main focus is to have This Was What There Was: American Palimpsests published and exhibited. With the subprime crises having caused almost 1 million homes to foreclose in 2008, this is the time to get the work out there.
I have started to photograph the Persian Jewish community of Great Neck, NY. My parents live there along with some 15,000 Iranian Jews. This project is something I have had in mind for a long time; now that I am living in Sydney, it is what I work on when I come home. In the meantime, I am working out a few ideas about Australia but nothing is solid yet.
Canton, Michigan. July 2006 from This Was What There Was: American Palimpsests © Stacy Arezou Mehrfar
You can find more from the series This Was What There Was: American Palimpsests on www.stacymehrfar.com. Be sure to look through her Contained series as well which has some interesting portraiture and interiors.
Thank you Stacy!
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