For some people, a dilapidated building is a safety hazard, a burden on real estate prices, or merely an eyesore. On the other hand, for people like Jeffrey Stockbridge, they are places that tell stories and offer an opportunity to peer into the past. At the Painted Bride Art Center, a series of Stockbridge’s photographs of these unloved locations in Philadelphia is on display courtesy of InLiquid Art & Design. While the subject matter in “Homegoing: Photographs from 2004-2008” seems gloomy, the photographer’s lens also captures striking bits of humanity amidst the ruins.

Jeffrey Stockbridge. Photo courtesy jeffreystockbridge.com

One image zooms in tightly on a wooden staircase coated in cracking brownish gray paint. Chips of this paint and years of dust collect in the crevices, making the scene invoke charred campfire remnants as much as steps. The entire frame is bisected by a dark black shadow that slinks up the stairs in a zig-zag shape, across a sideways pot of plastic flowers resting on the lower end of the stairs. Unlike their biological counterparts, these flowers have not wilted, and never will, although a few stray petals and the permeating dust seem to acknowledge just how long these facsimiles have called this spot home.

Jeffrey Stockbridge. Photo courtesy jeffreystockbridge.com

In a long neglected bedroom, the strewn clothing, ripped armchair and chunks of plaster lining the floor all seem to fade into the background as the triptych of two windows and a mirror steal the viewer’s gaze. Each of the lightly curtained window frames glows a deep yellow, illuminating the entire room, while the mirror seems unchanged in its central location, reflecting a glimpse of the opposing wall and bed. Directly before the inexplicably shiny looking glass sits a record player, the only other remnant here that looks functional, ready to play music for a long gone listener.

Stockbridge also includes other snippets from these former living spaces in the form of handwritten notes and anonymous photographs. Aging notebook paper full of poems or prayers, as well as notes to friends and family, breathes life into these otherwise empty abodes, while smiling faces and posed snapshots remind us of the individuals that used to call these houses homes, and in a way, they manage to salvage some hope from the ruin.

Jeffrey Stockbridge. Photo courtesy jeffreystockbridge.com

Another photograph captures a lot with only two houses, both constructed from red brick. One is abandoned, its downstairs windows boarded up and its upstairs windows a pair of empty sockets. Next door, the adjoined and slightly taller of the pair is still somebody’s home, with a face looking out from the front door and a man seated on the stoop.

The cohabitation of these occupied and abandoned residential areas are indicative of Philadelphia and many areas of the country where foreclosed houses and poverty are all too common. But through Stockbridge’s documentation of the wreckage of the present, we are not only able to recall the past, but perhaps imagine a better future. And, just maybe, we can also manage to find a hint of beauty in the decay.

Painted Bride Art Center is located at 230 Vine St., Philadelphia; [email protected]; paintedbride.org.