A moderate-to-severe level of apartment envy is expected of most city dwellers, but as a photographer of listings for a high-end real estate firm, Heather Weston had it particularly bad. In 2011, she was living in a 450-square-foot rental in New York City with her husband, daughter, and two cats, and as her friends began purchasing homes, her space anxiety only got worse. "I was having a bit of a breakdown about it," she explains to the Huffington Post. "I was always setting the stage for unrealistic perfection." Because upgrading her square footage wasn't exactly in the cards, Weston set out to expose just how unrealistic that perfection was.
With her 52 Families project, Weston spent a year taking in-home portraits of D.C. and New York City families from all walks of life. The photos eventually led to a recent show at Brooklyn's Invisible Dog gallery, but also served as a kind of ongoing ward against apartment envy. "It's really about learning not to be super attached to things," says Weston. "I would come home and clean my house or make more trips to GoodWill. When you can photograph a space and see things, it's easier to get rid of them, too." This way for similar projects in France, late-'70s Brooklyn, and the Midwest; check out Weston's blog for the full series.
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