I wanted to introduce you to this fantastic book produced by London writer, Francesca Gavin. She is currently Visual Arts Editor at 'Dazed & Confused'. I have worked in magazines for many years concentrating on the design aesthetic of the home. This is great but the problem is they don't really define what the home means to most of us. I have been saying for the last couple of years that looking inside a person's home is a fantastic cultural barometer in what the latest crazes are to how a person is feeling and thinking.
This book Creative Space: Urban Homes of Artists and Innovators features interiors created by people who shop in Colette in Paris, live on the Lower East Side in New York and travel to Tokyo; the domestic spaces are often DIY and strongly reflect pop culture. Filled with post-modern collectibles, vintage junk finds, camouflage and graffiti, clothing and toy collections, contemporary art resting in bookshelves and crammed onto walls, these homes are an antidote to the sterility of minimalism.
Looking at these interiors city by city, among the 30 homes featured in the book are those of the artist and designer Julie Verhoeven and Maharishi founder Hardy Blechmann in London, graffiti artist Fafi in Paris, artists Ryan McGinness and Wes Lang in New York, innovative creatives Jaybo and Lucio Auri in Berlin, Barcelona filmmaker Roger Gual and Tokyo's cult photographer Yasumusa Yonehara and artist Aya Takano. The spaces they inhabit and work in give a real image of today's avant garde.
One of my hero Brit photographers Derrick Santini who started shooting when he was 13-years-old and went on to shoot Alexander McQueen, James Morrison, Lily Allen, Yves Saint Laurent and Jay Jopling for magazines such as Dazed & Confused has used his intimate style of photography to capture some dogs with their pets!
