While California's drought has people wondering if traditional lawns may be headed for extinction in the Golden State, Roberta Neidigh has assembled a bizarrely fascinating survey of them. Specifically, where they collide on the property line between neighbors.
Like the rings of a tree, property lines are a measure of time, revealing landscaping and construction trends over the years. Neidigh's photos were taken in an inner, and therefore older, suburb of Sacramento that has seen changes and disruptions over the years. Neidigh points out a generation gap, writ in differing planter box styles.
"There are definite patterns of cohesiveness," says Neidigh of her series Property Line. She says it's possible to observe "the layering of planting trends over 50, 60 years, or even older."
A Midwest transplant who's settled in California's capitol city, Neidigh set out to document the "groomed landscapes" of the city, drilling down past the Pleasantville-type conformity to reveal the unique personailties expressed in seemingly cookie-cutter borders. Her earlier series, With Great Care, focuses on the tightly groomed mulberry trees found in Sacramento neighborhoods. She's intrigued by the tension of perennially pruning these plants that outgrow their accceptable bounds.
"It has that inherited design, where they're maintaining this thing that's been planted so long ago, and just keeping it in bounds," Neidigh says.
A former fiber artist, she was quick to see the photographic potential in this yard-based form of self expression. "Texture and color: If I see it, I make a composition out of that," says Neidigh, a 2013 Emerging Focus Finalist. "I was an artistic collaborator with these neighbors, even though I never met these people."
