



1 / 14 Chevron Chevron Jessica Eve Rattner Lee reads several newspapers daily. She especially likes the funnies, and always does the word-scramble puzzles.

In 2003, the photographer Jessica Eve Rattner moved into a house in Berkeley, California, around the corner from an old woman named Lee. Lee had been a model when she was young—a shoe model for fancy department stores, primarily. “She has these teeny-tiny feet,” Rattner told me. Lee was once professionally beautiful, a person to be seen. But when Rattner met her, Lee was a person who was often overlooked—she was the neighborhood “bag lady.” Lee would make rounds of the houses in the area, collecting cans and other scraps from trash cans. Her house, which she’d lived in for decades, was an infamous mess, piled high with who knows what. She was, Rattner said, “definitely a ‘fixture’ ”—a word we often use, sentimentally but also dismissively, about the eccentric elderly. People were mostly fond of Lee, but didn’t actually engage with her much. She was part of the local patina.

“I’m not always very good at keeping to myself,” Rattner told me. Over time, she started talking to Lee. “She has lots of opinions. I was growing a garden, and she knows everything about plants and animals. She would give me advice about my plants. She just knew things that other people didn’t know.” They became friends. Rattner had recently taken up photography and suggested to Lee that they do a project together documenting Lee’s life. Lee liked the idea and proved a natural subject, going on with her life as though the camera weren’t there. That was ten years ago. Rattner has been taking pictures of Lee ever since. The photo series, which is ongoing, is called “House of Charm,” named after a school where Lee studied modelling when she was young. (Earlier this year, the project was awarded the annual Documentary Essay Prize from Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies.)

Many of Rattner’s photos are taken in the interior of Lee’s house. It is severely dilapidated—cobwebs and shreds of old floral wallpaper hang down from the walls like Spanish moss. Her possessions stand in mounds and piles: old newspapers and empty food containers, boxes and bottles and bags. But points of brightness poke through: a pretty hat, a colorful decoration, a bouquet of artificial flowers. We’ve seen this sort of scene before, in “house of horrors” tabloid stories, or in reality shows about hoarder interventions. But Rattner frames Lee’s life with a compassionate attention. Lee’s hair, which is piled in twisted mats at the back of her head, looks artful in its construction; light streams golden through the lacy dirt on the windows; piles of junk take on the lushness of mountain landscapes. In one photo, Lee takes a nap in her room amid piles of clothes and papers, nearly disappearing into the clutter; in another, she prepares for the Christmas party at a local pub, looking stately and delicate, maybe even a little vain, as she carefully arranges her bright pink dress coat and her flowered hat in a spotted mirror.

After a decade spent photographing Lee, Rattner considers her like a family member, and so Rattner was there to assist when, last year, Lee was hit by a car and had to be moved out of her house. She spent a long time in physical rehab and, just recently, moved into a new house with one of her sons. It was a radical change for someone who had lived so independently for so long. “It’s as though a switch has flipped,” Rattner told me—in her new place, Lee has more or less stopped accumulating things. “She’s a person who has, in a way, lost everything,” Rattner said. “But it’s not something she talks about or laments.”

Lee knows that Rattner’s photos of her are sometimes displayed or published, but it’s not something that she asks about or seems to care much about. Rattner, on the other hand, says that she gets “a little scared” about sending these images out into the world. She hopes to question the labels—labels such as “crazy” or “ill”—that are often affixed to unusual people and can act as barriers to connection and understanding. But she worries her project might not always be received that way. “I’m devastated when people find the photos obscene or disgusting. I know that some people find the pictures troubling,” she said. “Photos aren’t the whole truth. And maybe these photos are more my truth than Lee’s.” She added, “I don’t know if people will see this as flattering. But I hope they see that it comes from respect and love.”