During the Great Depression, the U.S. government built three planned communities. These “Greenbelt Towns” offered a new way of American life based on co-operation through urban planning and social engineering. These photographs question the urge to create a perfect society, and explore the complex relationship between humans, the built environment, and nature. They offer a meditation on the utopian belief that architectural and natural design can shape the workings of a community.
About the Artist
Jason Reblando, born 1973 in Flushing, NY, is an MFA candidate in photography at Columbia College Chicago. He earned a BA in sociology from Boston College and is a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award, a City of Chicago CAAP Grant, and a Columbia College Follett Fellowship. His work has been exhibited at the Minnesota Center for Photography, The Light Factory in Charlotte, the Houston Center for Photography, and the City Gallery of Photography at the Historic Water Tower in Chicago. His work is collected in the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s Midwest Photographers Project, the Center for Civil and Human Rights, and the Milwaukee Art Museum.