ADAM

ADAM is a photographic project, which documents my attempt to track down a con artist who defrauded me of $4,000 in wages, while I was working as a carpenter contracted to renovate a foreclosed home.

ADAM is a photographic project, which documents my attempt to track down a con artist who defrauded me of $4,000 in wages, while I was working as a carpenter contracted to renovate a foreclosed home. This work uses images, text and email correspondence to investigate themes of theft, escape, the malleability of identity and the archetype of the American con artist. Adam Burroughs was a real estate con artist who convinced several individual to invest in renovating foreclosed homes. Before completing the projects Burroughs disappeared with all the investors money and without paying any of the contractors.

ADAM documents my journey from Saint Paul, Minnesota to Huntington Beach, California, where Buroughs was last seen. For the project I traveled to houses where

Burroughs had once lived and photographed individual who shared Adam’s name. In part, my search to find Adam was motivated by my desire for justice. This project builds on the tradition of the American photographic road trip and utilizes the filmic trope of the vigilante to explore the national economic recession and the foreclosure crisis.