Picturebook Proposal, Part I

The day that I "moved up" from seventh grade, my brother and I decided to explore an abandoned house on our road. A few days later, after Thomas convinced his friend Andy Capra to come with us, we decided to go. The house was white and wooden, set back from the road a little bit. We walked up the driveway, which was gravel and seemed unnaturally long; once we reached the end though, we were really nervous. The driveway was set to the right of the house, and mostly hidden from the road by a small hill. If we stood on the porch though, which we had to do to open the door, we would be exposed to cars driving past and the elderly woman across the road, who is stereotypically nosy and disapproving, especially of illegal activity perpetrated by (almost) teenagers. Thinking of this, we agreed to look for a back door behind the house. Unfortunately, we only tangled ourselves in a patch of thorn bushes without finding another way in, and had to go back to the front. Standing so close, the house didn't look as neglected, only empty, as though its owner had walked out one day and forgotten to come back. To the left of the doorway it even had an orange and black sticker, that I think told the fire department that there was a dog inside, but I might have imagined that. The door opened softly, without squeaking. Inside it was quiet, the only sound when we walked across the linoleum in the kitchen or up the stairs, which were creaky. The rooms smelled stale, like the dust had settled in the air. Visually, the scene was characterized by emptiness. Much of the furniture was gone; upstairs in a bedroom, there was a worn, yellow armchair facing the window. It looked out over the lawn; the grass there was not so much overgrown as wild. There were just enough remnants of whoever had lived there that we could see that it had once been someone's home: the refrigerator in the kitchen, the shag carpet and outdated wallpaper. However, it was still desolate enough to make us nervous. In recreating this moment, I would like to capture that experience. I want to evoke that eerie, unsettling quality, without shooting something that looks like the poster for a horror movie.

To photograph this moment, I think that I will use the same house, because it's convenient and I know what I'll find inside. I'd like one, perhaps, two subjects to model for me. I think that the lighting will be the trickiest part of taking this. I'd prefer natural light; artificial light would be difficult because there won't be any outlets nearby, but also because I think that a light source like a flashlight might confuse the narrative, making it seem like my subjects are trapped somewhere terrifying which sounds kind of cartoonish. But I'll definitely have to make sure my images don't look underexposed.