Hoard and Clutter


  • Photographer
    Fara Phoebe Zetzsche
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Date of Photograph
    September 09 - October 09
  • Technical Info
    Canon EOS 40 D

The daily life of a Compulsive Hoarding Family The family lives in a mansion in Eastern Germany. Behind closed doors they piled up boxes, clothes, unopened packages and worn out toys up to the ceiling. According to estimates by the self-help group „Anonymous Messies“ about 1,8 Mio affected people live in Germany. They can not let go of their possessions because of fear of loss and angst. The mother´s family only had the bare necessities, the father grew up in children´s homes. They never got to now an ideal world. Now they pass old behavioral pattern in their own family.

Story

„HOARD AND CLUTTER“
The daily life of a Compulsive Hoarding Family

The well renovated mansion is located between vineyards and the meadows of the River Elbe in the eastern part of Germany. Behind closed doors the extended family, who lives there, has piled up furniture, boxes, wrinkled clothes, plastic bags, unopened packages and worn out toys up to the ceiling. In the bedroom a narrow passage leads to a television where the children spend their afternoons.

According to estimates by the self-help group „Anonymous Messies“ about 1,8 Mio. affected people live in Germany. Compulsive Hoarding is an element of obsessive-compulsive disorder in which people can not let go of their possessions because of fear of loss and angst.

Because of the exceptional and abnormal circumstances only two of their twelve children live at home. Four children stay at a children´s home because the youth welfare office took away custody from the parents. The others already are old enough and try to manage their own lives. They rarely come back home.

"We will never lead a normal life" says the family about themselves. The mother´s family only had the bare necessities, the father was dispatched from children´s home to children´s home.
They never got to know an ideal world. Now they pass old behavioral patterns in their own family.

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