While extremely unusual and therefore also inspiring in a challenging sort of way, this morning’s assignment to document the Swedish hoarder’s house (for a cleaning and sanitation company that had employed my services) left me with a lasting feeling of both downheartedness and repugnance. A textbook example of when consumerism and social services have gone awry. Somehow not an entirely different feeling after visiting the Exclusion Zone at Chernobyl.

I came at this project with my usual enthusiasm but upon taking just a few trembling steps in through the front door, I was immediately forced to climb over heaps and piles of trash. A horrendous stench, by itself intensely nauseating, engulfed me like an invisible cloud of death. I can’t even look through the footage I shot without involuntarily prompting the thick, sour-sweet smell of rot, mold, and human decay from those very first few steps.

The unbelievable scenes from each room made it physically and emotionally taxing to focus, let alone find stable and level space for my tripod. I’d never before witnessed such abysmal neglect and haphazard organization this woman had spent likely decades of her aging life wading and sifting through. Apparently, her son hadn’t visited her since the 1980s and it would seem that few others had, either.

But what had gone wrong?

Was her life’s tragic ending another emblematic case of Sweden’s inability to embrace and integrate a multi-generational society? Or, had the woman just let go of every moral and hygienic constraint after her spouse had left her or passed away? Did she not care about anything any longer yet was unable to manage her pain and suffering other than by becoming a recluse, a cave-woman, a hoarder? Was she ever diagnosed, let alone treated for her illness?

I’ll likely never know.

But gathering from her well-stocked bar and vast LP collection, there might have been a period in her life when wine beer, and cocktails were often poured and music was played loudly with great joy and frenzy. I take some solace in hoping there is truth to that assumption. Somehow, this assignment reminded me of my ongoing art project, Resurfaced.