My photography course required me to do a project titled “Public”. One of my subjects for this project became public housing and utility. In Columbia we have hundreds of single family homes that are decades old and over time have been converted into multi-family rental properties.

Overstuffed with residents and for the most part neglected; these buildings and their surroundings tell such stories.

This is a common sign around here. While the legitimacy of the cable service a hotly debated issue, mostly because my building does not have cable whatsoever, the wa in which people go about stealing cable is so obvious. Across from my building new cables appear daily going from one window to another. Every once-in-awhile Mediacom will stop buy and unscrew the extras as they fall to the ground limp and powerless.

It isn’t long before someone has the plugged back in and it’s been nearly a year since I saw Mediacom take attention. You can’t stop the masses and stick it to the man, etc.

What I enjoy with this picture is the perfectly vertically level pipe going up the side of the building juxtaposed to the halfhazardly installed pine cable box serving almost no purpose as the cables fall out to weather the environment without protection.