robert harding pittman

The Bubble (work in progress) + Info

robert harding pittman

“Para mi la crisis es provocada por todos los ciudadanos, no por los que estén arriba. Tal vez los que estén arriba ponen las redes. Pero los que caimos en las redes somos nosotros. Las redes para mi son el consumismo, la farmaceutica, las carnes, los excesos, la television… Esa es la verdadera crisis, que luego se traduce en una crisis general monetaria…”

“In my opinion the crisis is caused by all citizens, not by those in power. Maybe those who are high up cast the nets. But we are the ones who get caught in the nets. For me the nets are consumerism, pharmaceuticals, meats, our excesses, television…. This is the true crisis, which then translates into a general monetary crisis…”

Javier Serdar – House painter during Spain’s construction boom

“We [Americans] have gone to extreme lengths to not be bored. I heard a quote from a monk [who]…said that what Americans are most afraid of is boredom…And if you look at the American lifestyle, that’s essentially what it is, particularly the houses. You look at big houses full of pool tables, and huge closets full of all the stuff we get shopping…three car, four car garages full of cars and other toys. It’s all a very elaborate avoidance of boredom.”

– Chris Wass (Real Estate Broker. Owner Firefly Real Estate LLC, Phoenix.)

“Buckeye has long been a farming community in Arizona established in the late 1800’s…Much of the valley…was a farm field at one time… Buckeye has always wanted to become a big city…And so the city has always had open arms for development. It’s always wanted to be something bigger than itself….It’s always wanted to become the greatest opportunity in Arizona and we’ve become that by attracting development to the community.”

“Buckeye’s population in 2000 was just a tad over 6,000 people. By 2010 it had grown to 59,000…In 2015 Buckeye was at 62,600.”

– Ed Boik (Senior Planner – City of Buckeye, Arizona)

“There was greed at every level in the mortgage industry [in the early 2000’s]… The mortgage people like myself…the experienced ones knew, that these loans were crazy. But they were shoved down our throats by the great big banks and…, they were shoved down the banks’ throats by Wall Street. No one really understood traunches and derivatives and all of that. But it was a shell game…They needed to generate as many loans as possible and that meant just lending without abandon and not lending without credit risk involved… And I think borrowers were greedy…people would just flat out lie about their incomes and not really understand what it meant to take on a mortgage and a home.”

– Curt Larson (Mortgage Broker. Vice President of Reverse Mortage Lending at Alliance Home Loans)

“Human habitat is really nothing more than a real estate commodity to be built on the cheap and deliver profits to those who make it.”

– Phil Allsopp (Senior Scientist ASU Global Institute of Sustainability, Chief of Design-Smart Pad Living)

“Para mi la crisis es provocada por todos los ciudadanos, no por los que estén arriba. Tal vez los que estén arriba ponen las redes. Pero los que caimos en las redes somos nosotros. Las redes para mi son el consumismo, la farmaceutica, las carnes, los excesos, la television… Esa es la verdadera crisis, que luego se traduce en una crisis general monetaria…”

“In my opinion the crisis is caused by all citizens, not by those in power. Maybe those who are high up cast the nets. But we are the ones who get caught in the nets. For me the nets are consumerism, pharmaceuticals, meats, our excesses, television…. This is the true crisis, which then translates into a general monetary crisis…”

Javier Serdar – House painter during Spain’s construction boom

“We [Americans] have gone to extreme lengths to not be bored. I heard a quote from a monk [who]…said that what Americans are most afraid of is boredom…And if you look at the American lifestyle, that’s essentially what it is, particularly the houses. You look at big houses full of pool tables, and huge closets full of all the stuff we get shopping…three car, four car garages full of cars and other toys. It’s all a very elaborate avoidance of boredom.”

– Chris Wass (Real Estate Broker. Owner Firefly Real Estate LLC, Phoenix.)

“Buckeye has long been a farming community in Arizona established in the late 1800’s…Much of the valley…was a farm field at one time… Buckeye has always wanted to become a big city…And so the city has always had open arms for development. It’s always wanted to be something bigger than itself….It’s always wanted to become the greatest opportunity in Arizona and we’ve become that by attracting development to the community.”

“Buckeye’s population in 2000 was just a tad over 6,000 people. By 2010 it had grown to 59,000…In 2015 Buckeye was at 62,600.”

– Ed Boik (Senior Planner – City of Buckeye, Arizona)

“There was greed at every level in the mortgage industry [in the early 2000’s]… The mortgage people like myself…the experienced ones knew, that these loans were crazy. But they were shoved down our throats by the great big banks and…, they were shoved down the banks’ throats by Wall Street. No one really understood traunches and derivatives and all of that. But it was a shell game…They needed to generate as many loans as possible and that meant just lending without abandon and not lending without credit risk involved… And I think borrowers were greedy…people would just flat out lie about their incomes and not really understand what it meant to take on a mortgage and a home.”

– Curt Larson (Mortgage Broker. Vice President of Reverse Mortage Lending at Alliance Home Loans)

“Human habitat is really nothing more than a real estate commodity to be built on the cheap and deliver profits to those who make it.”

– Phil Allsopp (Senior Scientist ASU Global Institute of Sustainability, Chief of Design-Smart Pad Living)

My new project “The Bubble” is the continuation of “Anonymization”. While “Anonymization” was about the destruction of our lands, “The Bubble” is about the return of nature. I am photographing how pioneering species of vegetation are re-colonizing lands razed by developers’ bulldozers for master-planned community construction sites which have been paralyzed, at least temporarily, by the economic crisis. The fate of these plants depends just as much on the stock market as does that of the developers, although inversely. The crisis allows them to thrive until markets improve again and the bulldozers return. These pioneering species are called “r-strategists” which, though short-lived, thrive in disturbed landscapes by reproducing very quickly and extensively. There are many parallels to how the construction boom and our economy have functioned in the recent past.

Recently, I have begun making portraits and interviewing people, with video, who are also directly impacted by the economic cycles which our built environment undergoes. So far in Spain and in Phoenix, I have interviewed construction workers, farmers, a builder, an architect, a real estate agent, a mortgage broker, a biologist and an environmental activist. More are to come.

In these abandoned construction sites, with which quick profits were intended to be made and which were destined to become housing for thousands and thousands of people, we see how financial resources, labor, energy resources, water, land, habitat for flora and fauna as well as the lives of flora and fauna have been sacrificed for naught. These “wastelands” are an example of un – sustainability, and of how to not develop our planet.

The ultimate goal is to produce a book and traveling exhibition of the work.

“People of a future society, chastened but also liberated, will look back on the images contained here with an air of confusion. What kind of people inhabited these spaces? What were they thinking? They’ll be right to wonder.”
– Bill McKibben, (from my book “Anonymization”)


With photographs from USA and Spain.