When we relocated to Rhode Island, my only previous experience of the state was driving through it on business trips. My partner had visited Providence to interview for a position at Brown University, which she accepted. I trusted her judgment that we could build a good life here.

I remember driving around in search of a rental home, thinking, “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore”(The Wizard of Oz, 1939). I had been born and raised in California, where neighborhoods were filled with near-identical houses, distinguished only by paint color or siding. Nearby, strip malls, fast food chains, and big-box stores reinforced that “Anywhere USA” sameness. Where I grew up, driveways never held broken-down cars or boats, and yard art was rare. Warwick felt different from the start.

Just before the COVID pandemic, we decided to become a one-vehicle family. Between lockdowns and limited access to the car, photographing in my usual way became difficult. Gradually, I realized I’d need to focus on what I could find within walking or biking distance.

That’s when I began noticing the character in my neighbors’ yards: lions, elves, turtles, flamingos—and lighthouses everywhere. (There are, in fact, two real lighthouses along Warwick’s shoreline on Narragansett Bay.) My early images, however, felt flat—more like a catalog than a story—and I sometimes felt uncomfortably like a voyeur taking photographs of neighbors’ homes and yards.

Over time, the project shifted. Instead of simply documenting, I began shaping a narrative from an outsider’s perspective—one that reflected what I found unique, eccentric, and beautiful about Warwick. It became, unexpectedly, a love letter to my adopted hometown and a time capsule.

Like many communities, Warwick is now in the midst of gentrification, a change that risks erasing the very quirks that make it special, replacing them with that same “Anywhere USA” uniformity I once knew so well. This work is my attempt to preserve, in photographs, the Warwick I encountered: distinct, surprising, and full of character.

Reed Pike — 2025