Home Stills

The home is often the perfect stage for domestic bliss and self-observation. The award-winning artist Bastienne Schmidt challenges this domestic utopia in her new series Home Stills, in which she photographs herself in the role of a 'Housewife'. Schmidt gives a visual interpretation of Virginia Woolf's idea of 'a room of one's own'. She follows the Highway 27 on Long Island, from Patchogue to Easthampton, recreating interiors from cheap motel rooms to upscale Hamptons mansions as imaginary rooms of her own. The sense of quiet meditation reminds one of Vermeer's interiors and the melancholy and empty spaces of Edward Hopper. The light casts long and clear shadows, dense with rich colour. In this world, the silhouetted female figure walks seamlessly from open landscape into suburbia. She seems to be stepping out of a film of Wim Wenders, only instead of a lonely cowboy she is a lone housewife walking out of the picture and away from her family, into the sunset. This is Bastienne Schmidt's fourth photography book. Her most recent book was ShadowHome, published in 2005, which won the award for the best photo book in Germany.