If the "Occupied" series has a weakness, it is this lack of precision. It is not surprising that, as Stockbridge admits, many viewers have confused them for shots of post-Katrina New Orleans. Among the current spate of foreclosures, they are apt to be misread again.

By contrast, precision and clear focus are hallmarks of Stockbridge’s more recent work. He still begins with abandoned houses, but his concern is less with formal qualities than the details of the home: the food still in the fridge, or the calendar from 1991 hanging on a wall. Moreover, the project involves more than interior shots and found objects. Stockbridge now provides a much fuller sense of context, including photographs of surrounding neighborhoods and local residents. "If you’d asked me to photograph people while I was doing the original ‘Occupied’ series, I would have said, ‘No way,’" he says. "It was a lot easier to just sneak into abandoned houses and snap these photographs and sneak out; it was more about me being this silent, invisible photographer that moved through all these neighborhoods in Philadelphia that no one knew about. Now my presence is very obvious. When I’m interested in photographing a house, I’ll walk up and down the street and introduce myself to anyone that’s there."

Stockbridge’s portraits are as arresting as his softly lit, boarded-up interiors. He has pictures of people on the street and squatters he’s come across inside homes. He’s done a series on female addicts who turn to prostitution. In one of the most powerful images, he shows a couple framed by the door of the home they have lived in for 50 years, which abuts an abandoned building whose slow collapse is beginning to bring down their house too. And Stockbridge has done away with the tilt-shift method. These are straight photographs, and they speak with a direct, unwavering voice. Spend some time looking at them and you get the sense that whatever Stockbridge was searching for in abandoned homes, he found it as soon as he stepped out onto the streets.

A selection from the "Occupied" series will be included in a group photography show on view at J. Cacciola Gallery from June 4-30.

"Aesthetics of Dilapidation" originally appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' Summer 2009 Table of Contents.