This work is collectively called 'Neighborhoods of the Mind' and is part of a project I have been working on for 4 years in Brooklyn, New York City. I am a photographer and artist as well as a doctoral candidate in the Environmental Psychology department of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. This work looks at one small neighborhood to address the experience of place, and the process of layering personal meaning, memory and narrative on urban public spaces. This layering is what makes these public spaces into places with human importance; there is not only a physical neighborhood, but also many layers of 'neighborhoods of the mind.'

To understand how this happens, I ask local people in a neighborhood to give me their personal tours of the neighborhood, and to talk about how places are important to them. I photograph these places, and show the photographs to the people I have worked with, and continue to talk with them about the stories that are connected to these places. The text pieces that accompany the photographs are excerpts from their extensive narratives. For me, making photographs is my contribution to a vision of the neighborhood, as well as a reflection of my own theorizing of the place, to which I encourage response and critique through interaction with the residents who have participated with me in this project.

To see these pieces in their entirety, and read the accompanying text, please download the pdf versions, listed below in the web link section.You can see more of my participatory photographic spatial narrative projects on my website, www.buscada.com, also listed in the web links below.