Pink Barbie House, Pink Cars, Footscray
I was walking around West Footscray recently – taking pictures of houses, buildings and cars, as per usual – when I came across the extraordinary sight of four pink cars parked in front of one pink Barbie-like house. On closer inspection there was a fifth pink car, the latter in the front garden, this one with Barbie as its number plate. A more beautiful suburban sight you’re unlikely to ever see. The pink picket fence too was adorned with pink bows, and there are no doubt more trimmings. In the garden, too, there are pink flowers in bloom. It turns out that this property is known as Footscray’s Barbie House. It’s an apt name.
Campbell Mattinson is a Melbourne photographer, based in Melbourne’s western suburbs. He has an ongoing series of photographs called Real Estate Novelist.
The bright colours, and the bright sun, and the bright blue sky are all in my wheelhouse, so I snapped a few images from various angles. It’s hard to frame all four cars in the one image and for it to still work well as a image – the image of the single VW with the house behind is arguably the most successful image – but it was still worth cvpautiring th overall scene. When I mocked up the poster above, just for the hell of it, I upped the saturation to help give it a vivid retro feel.
I took some snaps and then kept walking for maybe another 90 minutes. I headed across Geelong Road into the industrial area there. On the way back to the car I passed the pink house with all the pink cars again, and because the sun had moved by then I took some more shots. You can see the different light in some of the images; that’s the reason.
It would be great to know the story behind the pink cars and the pink Barbie house in Footscray but it was still great to just photograph and document what is publicly visible. If I ever do a Real Estate Novelist book, I’d reckon that one of the image above will appear in it.
Campbell Mattinson is a Melbourne photographer, based in Melbourne’s western suburbs. He has an ongoing series of photographs called Real Estate Novelist.
