Aunt Anna’s House—Stripped: The Pink Study

Shellburne Thurber

1989

Chromogenic color print

Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

The photographs of Shellburne Thurber (Born 1949 in Boston) most frequently show unpopulated houses and rooms. Although the interiors are devoid of people, Thurber is interested in the ways they bear the presence of their occupants. “I became intrigued,” she says, “by the uncanny way in which inhabited spaces take on the energy of those who live and work in them.” Thurber first created this kind of image soon after her mother died, when photographing her mother’s spaces was a way to process her life and death on a deeper level. In addition to the homes of loved ones, Thurber has photographed spaces such as motel rooms and abandoned