Home is where the heart is, but the devil is in the detail and the crumbs
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What makes a home a home when its inhabitants are absent? The devil is in the details for me and it’s the details that are imbued with the essence of ’home’ for me. It’s the people and the traces they leave in their absence. It’s the stuff we’ve collected and the stories they hold for us. Its the mess we leave when there’s no one around to see it. Its the clutter and the crumbs of family life.
My new photographic art series explores this concept in the age of the Pinterest-worthy home with a series of images of the details left
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behind when a home’s occupants are not around.
The crumbs on the table after breakfast, the unmade beds, the disorganised tumble of books stacked on a shelf groaning under the weight, even in the pile of toys carelessly thrown on the floor and left there when a toddler’s mind skipped to the next exciting thing (irritating though it may be to have to go and tidy away!), the treasures gathered over the years, the thrift store finds, the photos on the mantlepiece, the scratches on the table that was once a dining table and is now the kids’
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craft centre!
If home is where the heart is, then in my house, the heart is often a little messy (ok a lot – apart from the 10 minutes after the cleaner has been!), fairly disorganised and cluttered, often with things out of place or stuffed in a box for a semblance of momentary tidiness. But it’s also a place where there is a lot of fun and creativity and where beauty can be found even amidst the crumbs.
As a London documentary family photographer it’s sometimes easy to overlook those details and focus on the people, so I’ve started to
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document those little traces of what makes my home a home. When the children are at school or nursery and the husband is at work, and it’s just me pottering, working, sighing at the pile of laundry or dirty dishes (ok maybe watching a bit of TV and ignoring all the work and laundry there is to be getting on with!), these are the reminders of what makes this a home – a family – the traces of the people who live and love here.
These are the details that I’ll want to recall – in the years when our home is a little quieter, a little less
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chaotic, a little less messy and fewer toys spilling out of every box and surface. Wherever we live when those days come, it will still be our home – wherever we may be scattered – and I’ll be able to look back at the building blocks of what makes our home, ours. And it won’t be in the bricks we live within, it’ll be in the fingerprints we’ve left along the way.
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Ketchup and Cornflakes - Rachel Rimell Photography - 23 Jan 19
What makes a home a home when its inhabitants are absent? The devil is in the details for me and it’s the details that are imbued with the essence of ‘home’ for me. It’s the people and the traces they leave in their absence. It’s the stuff we’ve collected and the stories they hold for us. Its the mess we leave when there’s no one around to see it. Its the clutter and the crumbs of family life.
My new photographic art series explores this concept in the age of the Pinterest-worthy home with a series of images of the details left behind when a home’s occupants are not around.
The crumbs on the table after breakfast, the unmade beds, the disorganised tumble of books stacked on a shelf groaning under the weight, even in the pile of toys carelessly thrown on the floor and left there when a toddler’s mind skipped to the next exciting thing (irritating though it may be to have to go and tidy away!), the treasures gathered over the years, the thrift store finds, the photos on the mantlepiece, the scratches on the table that was once a dining table and is now the kids’ craft centre!
If home is where the heart is, then in my house, the heart is often a little messy (ok a lot – apart from the 10 minutes after the cleaner has been!), fairly disorganised and cluttered, often with things out of place or stuffed in a box for a semblance of momentary tidiness. But it’s also a place where there is a lot of fun and creativity and where beauty can be found even amidst the crumbs.
As a London documentary family photographer it’s sometimes easy to overlook those details and focus on the people, so I’ve started to document those little traces of what makes my home a home. When the children are at school or nursery and the husband is at work, and it’s just me pottering, working, sighing at the pile of laundry or dirty dishes (ok maybe watching a bit of TV and ignoring all the work and laundry there is to be getting on with!), these are the reminders of what makes this a home – a family – the traces of the people who live and love here.
These are the details that I’ll want to recall – in the years when our home is a little quieter, a little less chaotic, a little less messy and fewer toys spilling out of every box and surface. Wherever we live when those days come, it will still be our home – wherever we may be scattered – and I’ll be able to look back at the building blocks of what makes our home, ours. And it won’t be in the bricks we live within, it’ll be in the fingerprints we’ve left along the way.
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Published and award-winning documentary family photographer based in London. Documenting the everyday in family life as beautiful works of art and celebrating the beauty in the ordinary.
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