home – 2019
When tasked with creating a cohesive set of six images documenting ‘Home’ I thought it would be easy. ‘Home’ is where I go after work, it’s a concept that people talk or think about every day. This would be simple.
Or so I thought until I had to nail down exactly what I would frame and capture in an image. Yes, ‘home’ is an everyday concept, yet it’s tricky to define — especially if you need to fill a viewfinder with it before clicking a shutter release. The construct of home is ambiguous and changes based on time, proximity, emotion and memory — and as Ansel Adams said, “there is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.”
So is home the place you’ve lived the longest? Is it where your family has lived the longest? Is it where you grew up? What about if your parents split up, and the family home is no more, replaced instead by “Mum’s house” and “Dad’s house”? That’s what I’ve experienced, and I don’t have the sense of connection or memory to call either of my parents’ places my home, despite knowing I’m always welcome there.
In that case, is the key thing that defines home having a set of memories and emotions that connect you to a certain place and time? The nostalgia of childhood and recollections of Christmases and birthdays — of being surrounded by family and loved ones? Is home simply, as the song goes, ‘wherever I’m with you’?
But what about when I was with my girlfriend in Copenhagen? We were together in a beautiful apartment enjoying the Danish summer, but it wasn’t our home. Was it because of distance? When interviewed about his contribution to Magnum’s collaborative project ‘Home’, Mark Power stated:
“…if I’ve been travelling abroad for a while I’d probably consider my home to be England. If I’m already there, then I might think of Brighton as home. In Brighton I’d probably think of my house.”
Or was Copenhagen not our home because we were there for a week? We simply didn’t stay long enough, and therefore didn’t have the familiarity and connection to the city. Or was it that, despite the apartment being well furnished and homely, the possessions were those of the AirBnB owners, meaning we could never be comfortable without our own possessions. Is part of home the comfort of being surrounded by the objects you’ve deemed important enough to take through life with you?
Is comfort limited to possessions and structures? When I posed my colleagues Fleur and Tevita the question “what is home to you?” they came to the conclusion that “home is somewhere that makes you absolutely comfortable to be yourself.”
This goes for the physical, emotional, and interpersonal.
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I can’t fault Fleur and Tevita’s definition. But it made me think about how as we grow as people our definition of comfort — and therefore home — change. Home can also be defined by the perspective that time brings. What made my home a place where I was comfortable to be myself aged five or 15 is different to what it is at 30.
If this is the case the concept of home is about creating and anticipating the future as well as reminiscing on the past. Just as much as home is memories of helping Dad in the garden as a child, home is deliberately spending time in a place to build your familiarity. It’s saving to buy the ideal print for your wall, or moving into your ideal neighbourhood.
This juxtaposition is what I’ve attempted to capture through this series of photographs. I’ve also taken Mark Power’s point and — barring one image — removed the concept of home from a specific physical structure.
The first three images are from Wellington — the city where I grew up, where the majority of my family still live, and where I met my girlfriend. They show the landscape that acted as a backdrop for the first 27 years of my life. I can think of little else that brings me the same sense of hygge comfort than walking home from the train surrounded by the scent of wood smoke from suburban fireplaces, as autumnal darkness slowly hugs the hills and the harbour.
The final three images are of Auckland — the city I love and the place I see my future. Moving to Auckland with my girlfriend was a deliberate act of creating a home. These images show a mix of places where I feel comfortable in my adopted city, while at the same time representing an aspirational, future home.
All images shot on HP5+ at ISO800 with Rolleicord Va