In these current circumstances, our relationship to our home have changed significantly. Once somewhere we would return to relax, seek comfort and care for are daily needs as humans now has become much more. Now it has become our safe space, we have been told that the outside world is dangerous. Before coming home after work or a day trip was comforting but now we long to be out of it. Working from home has made our place to relax become stressful environments. I read a geographical review by Yi-Fu Tuan about our experience with place, paying particular attention when he talked about ‘home’.
Places have meaning to people. This is through our senses, memories and our interaction with a place. Especially the home which means most to people. The home is somewhere we cater for our needs as human, so washing, eating and sleeping. We normally have a routine. We wake up, wash, go to work, return, eat then sleep and the home becomes part of that routine. Wether its a trip to the shop or a week holiday, we always return to home. Although are experience of home has changed, what remain similar is that ‘privacy and nurturing shelter persist as the central qualities’. But the emotions for it have changed. For many, routines no longer exist and having to be at home feels like imprisonment. For others they seek comfort in the fact that at home they are safe from the risks of being outside.
Representing place in art can be hard. As a photographer shooting in someone else’s space you can’t begin to get the full sense of place. Seeing is an important sense and why photography is one of the best ways to portray a place. This is because the other senses you use to experience somewhere (touch, smell and taste) can’t be publicly displayed. Through photos you have to try portray these other senses which the viewer can’t experience. ‘Artists can, to a degree, objectivity intimate feelings into a picture’.
In my work I want to, the best that I can, represent the feeling of a place. The window is the main way I will do this. It suggest the feeling of safety and privacy that have always been emotions related to home.
Lucy Davis 