For many of us city-dwellers, even though we live packed on-top-of and next-to one another like sardines, we hardly see how our neighbors live. In my own particular building, the across-the-hall neighbors are keen on audibly locking their doors, never letting us even get a peek at their curtain color or choice of wall paint. So, I fulfill my curiosities by looking into people's homes by way of blogs and projects like The Selby and design*sponge's "Sneak Peeks," keen on capturing how it is that people live. These two sites venture into the homes of creatives: musicians, museum directors, writers, fashion and graphic designers and artists of all ilks. They are the spaces of those already partial to making the kinds of aesthetic decisions that might inform a beautiful home and so we lust over their choice of bar stools, the textiles on their beds, ponder how they accumulated such beautiful mid-century teak furniture, and wish our own apartments had the same kinds of crown moldings and built-in bookcases as theirs. The homes are real, but also aspirational; we look and we covet, but know we're looking at the exception.
Apartment Kitchen with Clean Dishes, Moving Out, 2006 by Sarah Szwajkos
In her statement, contender Sarah Szwajkos quotes author John Updike: ""My only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me -- to give the mundane its beautiful due." She photographs homes as well, but unlike the aforementioned projects who cultivate highly curated living spaces, Sarah is more interested in photographing personal spaces whose beauty isn't so apparent in visible objects.
She goes on to ask: "how do such everyday objects in our homes unveil the order and the disorder of modern life?" Sarah sees personal space as a Rorschach Test for inferring "basic creative urges," an open canvas for reading into someone's proclivities towards neatness or clutter, and an accumulation of tiny decisions made over time. She consciously leaves the inhabitants out of the frame, so instead we focus on what little we have to identify who they are, by observing the glint of the light and mysteries that lurk behind open cupboards and on the other side of bedroom walls. In this mundanity, we give life to the inanimate, and pause a second, to absorb the quietude of the places we call home.
Shower Stall, Scrub Brush, Two Hooks, 2008 by Sarah Szwajkos
See more of Sarah's work on personal spaces on her website, Damn Rabbit Studios.