Jen Drociak
The series Unoccupied Spaces encompasses photographs taken in empty offices, waiting areas and other public settings, laboratories, as well as the interior of the vacant Manchester Police Department and the empty classrooms of Manchester High School West.
In the sweltering heat of August in both 2012 and 2013, I was able to photograph the interior spaces of the inner-city public high school I graduated from nearly 20 years earlier. Few administrators, and no teachers were there at the time. Only janitors roamed the halls and classrooms waxing and buffing the tiled linoleum floors.
In these spaces, I was allowed to wander alone with the master key in one hand, and my camera affixed to a tripod in the other. What remained the same? What had changed? What did these spaces designated toward “instruction” and “learning” look like when the dialog between the instructors and their students was removed? What didn’t I notice about the spaces as an adolescent? What did I notice about them as an adult?
About Jen
Jen Drociak lives in Manchester, NH and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Conservation from the University of New Hampshire. She is employed with the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services where she has worked as a program specialist for the Pollution Prevention Program (2001-2002), a restoration specialist for the NH Coastal Program (2002-2005) where she established a monitoring program for pre- and post-restoration projects in NH’s salt marshes, and most recently as the Volunteer River Assessment Program Coordinator (2005-2011) where she provided technical assistance to approximately 200 volunteers who collected water quality samples for surface water quality assessments on NH’s rivers and streams. Jen has also worked for the Wastewater Engineering Bureau as a grants management specialist and is currently working for the Land Resources Management Bureau as a compliance specialist. Since 2000, Jen has also coordinated the Manchester Urban Ponds Restoration Program.
Jen studied photography at the New Hampshire Institute of Art from 2008 – 2012. Her recent bodies of work include that of waste water treatment facilities, drinking water treatment facilities, waste-to-energy
(incineration) and single-stream (zero sort) recycling facilities, invasive plant species. Her earlier works consists of coastal New England motels, hotels, and motor courts of the 1940s, and an examination of highly-processed convenient foods. These series can be viewed at www.jendrociak.com.
In addition to photography, her interests include studying the ethics and politics of food production, mid-century architecture and design, and landscape architecture and design.