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12/16/1993 14:44 2124313252 STEINBAUM KRAUSS PAGE

strong youngster I would help the men load the barns. Talk about hot places. But I think that's where it started because my early shacks are barns. I named them for family members and for people whose farms I knew until one time I noticed looking at old tobacco barns driving up Highway 301, that the structures looked just like my barns.
EF: What materials did you start with?
BB: The barns were made of paper, foam core. It was very helpful because I could cut out the shapes I wanted at a certain angle to give them just the look I was after. That was around 1984. Once I started to use clay they didn't look like barns anymore.
EF: And at this time you were photographing shacks and having a mental dialogue with shacks?
BB: Absolutely. I would look at a building and it would remind me of a person or a family.
EF: And you didn't even have to know whose building it was?
BB: Well at first I would know. Since I was a child I knew people who lived in shacks. I may not consciously know I was keeping all this in my brain but I could look at something and say, "No, Mrs. Harris wouldn't do this or that." Then after a while I didn't have to know.
EF: You could feel whose it might be?
BB: Yes. I have situations like that all the time. Once I was bringing some old clothing over to a truck driver who would take it to the collection office and an old man came a little too close to me, and it startled him. I said "I'm sorry" to him. But to the truck driver I said that I probably ruined that man's day. And I went on, "For sure he'll go home and take a high blood pressure  pill." And then just from that one encounter I was suddenly making up a scenario. I was seeing his whole life and putting myself into his place and I could even imagine what kind of house he lived in.

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