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I covered suburban America while working on a weekly magazine outside Chicago. It was my first journalism job, and after a couple of years I became well versed in the subject of suburbia. One of National Geographic’s picture editors saw my work a few years ago, and we began talking about doing an article on suburbia. When the zip code project came up, I was offered the assignment. It was great to be able to shoot a story for the magazine on a subject I know and that’s in my own backyard.
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As people move to Cary from different parts of the country, particularly from the Northeast, it has taken on the nickname: Containment Area for Relocated Yankees. There’s some tension between the Southerners who have a long family lineage and the Northerners who are brand new. I saw a bumper sticker that read: “We don’t care how you did things up North.” Another one read: “Welcome to the South. Now go home.”
I understand a little of where the Southerners are coming from. They’re experiencing a large-scale, fast-moving influx of people who are completely unlike them. I was in a subdivision talking with neighbors who were hanging around outside their houses. None of them were from the South. One woman from New York was telling me how much she liked Cary, and she said, “This place would be just perfect if we could just get rid of the Southerners.” I couldn’t believe she had the audacity to say that.
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Once a month about 17 women get together for a theme party. I was invited to photograph “Princess” night. So I drove over and as I got out of my car, a woman walked up wrapped in a bedsheet. Then another woman arrived dressed as a cowgirl in a leather mini skirt and red cowboy boots.
These are women who live pretty regular lives. They drive minivans to drop their kids off at school. But this is the one time a month when they can really let loose. There are no kids, no husbands, just 17 women from around 27 to 40 years old wearing tiaras and having a good time. The bedsheet woman was rather flamboyant; she spent the better part of the evening flashing most everybody. A couple of them had me sitting on their laps. By the end of the night they were dancing on the couch. It was very surreal.
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