Here I am, lying in bed in a daze. The air outside is 27 degrees. The sky is blue grey, tinged with pink pollution. I’m trying to remember the cold of the Gold Coast Ocean on my skin. Eight hours later, it is harder and harder to remember. The leaves outside are tired, wilted from the sun. As soon as it’s bearable I’ll water them with the lukewarm hose. We’re all tired.
A few years ago, I adopted these words from Elizabeth Hardwick. Here I am. A writer from New York, Elizabeth Hardwick would write Here I am ‘in Boston, on Marlborough Street, number 239’. She would write Here I am ‘in New York, on 67th Street in a high, steep place with long, dirty windows.’
The phrase set her clearly within the setting of her own story. I adopted this phrase. Those three words acted as a stake or a flag, that I drove into the page each time I wrote. An announcement to the page that I am here, that I exist.
Here I am on the front verandah, wheelie bins strewn up Union Street, the garbage man feeling extra full from the New Years gluttony. A radiating chorus of bird calls, squarks and cries reverberates around Spring Hill. A plane warbles overhead and cars streak by on Water Street. Someone has stuck a lost bird sign up on the telegraph pole. Murray the galah. Further down the street a sign reminds us that Pico the cat is still missing. As we walked by yesterday, we imagined the two of them teaming up, Murray the Aussie galah, Pico the South American backpacker
If you have lived in your home for some time, you know your home inside and out. It’s the tiny moments that I need to draw out from you. These are the moments I want to hear. The story of your house.
If your project is alterations and additions, one of the first steps will be to measure the existing house. I can count your windows and measure your stair, but what I can’t measure is the pride you felt for your daughter as she came down the stairs in her formal dress or the feeling of watching your kids play happily in the back yard. As Italo Calvino writes in Invisible Cities, your house consists of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past.
What makes your home unique is the way the sun reflects a pink hue off the terracotta roof next door. Or the way the sun passes through two high rises in the city on a certain day in November, casting a line of sunshine through your back yard. What makes your home unique is what we do to capture the light and shade, the surrounding built environment and how these interact with your lifestyle. How will your lifestyle change? Will you be here for 5 years, 10 years or 20 years? Beyond the style, what is the story you want to tell?
It's not just your home, but you who is unique. Many famous stories and feelings have been captured through street photography. Like slice of life writing, street style photography is a method of story telling where style is the main character. Like slice of life writing, street style photography is an act of exploration involving taking a moment to stop, observe and look a little deeper.
Think about those moments when you walk out of the house in your favourite outfit. The story you tell yourself is one of confidence, of feeling good. The result is effortless and the many tiny decisions that have gone into creating this look fade into the background. When you’ve hired the dress and it arrives on time, and best of all, it actually fits. You’re the main character of your story.
