Judy Gelles
(Somersworth, New Hampshire, 1944 - 2020, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
Mobile Home #10
1999
Fuji crystal archive print
16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm)
Collection of the Akron Art Museum
Gift of Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell
2025.7.3
Copyright of the artist
More Information
Mobile Home #10 may look staged or artificial, but it shows a real location: Leisure Living Estates, a mobile home retirement community in Melbourne Beach, Florida, where Judy Gelles would visit her parents each January. The residents would get to bed by 8 p.m., leaving Gelles with an opportunity to photograph empty streets and driveways in the dark of night. Using a tripod, she took between two and five minutes to make her exposures on color film, which produced blue-toned pictures from the nighttime conditions.