Ideal Home

Whilst researching for my dissertation, "Photography: Morality and the Domestic Interior", John Harrison recommended I take a look at John R J Taylor's "Ideal Home". This is probably the photographer who most directly influenced my Final Integrated Project.

The Book is full of photos of an ordinary home, albeit a super-tidy, super-clean home. The photos were taken in the 1980s and the home belongs to the photographer's sister. A few years after the photos were taken, Charles Newton (then at V&A) visited the photographer's sister and went through the photos with her, taping her comments. She is obviously not on the same wavelength as her bro, stating at one stage "John's daft.... I just don't understand his reasons sometimes".

The photographs are quiet observations of all corners of the house. Very ordinary, mundane in fact. Strangely I find them quite compelling. I love their simplicity, the photographer silently conveys a message - "Look at this, it is worthy of being photographed, think about it." As Charles Newton puts it "It is a rare invitation to reconsider what was normally taken for granted and think again about what all of it means, and why, particularly, it looks like it does." Another very important points he makes about the work is this "there is a whole textbook of sociology to be written, and read, but if you can read the photograph, it is not necessary. There used to be a hierarchy of images, so that there were things considered to be worthy (or unworthy) of being photographed. Yet objects gain a new aura merely because they are selected and isolated, and looked at again with new eyes.".