A project documenting photographer Stephen Joyce’s hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Joyce’s father died when Joyce was 18. “You Can’t Go Home Again” reflects different stages of Joyce’s grief and the difficulty of navigating a place so closely tied to the person he loved most. While always feeling a sense of attachment to his hometown, Joyce grew to avoid large swaths of the city as certain streets and neighbourhoods held too many memories. The series is one of self-discovery through re-discovering Pittsburgh over the past few years and the changes to both the place and himself in relation to it:
“These images show a geography that I only partly explored as a child, as I have a desire to go back in time and see what is now unseeable. Aspects of a city that were once commonly used, such as city steps, community centers, and river beds have been neglected and transformed, but they hold in their grasp the history of my city and family. The cars shown serve as portraits, as they represent the ones that my working class parents couldn’t afford as my father was on disability. I wanted to build and show a world that is devoid of people but not of the human effort that is all around us…. This work is intended to set a scene of stillness, contemplation, melancholy, and unease. While there is more for me to discover about the place that formed my sense of self, I am now able to call it home again, even if so much has changed.”
See more images below.
