Real Estate Novelist

I’m a writer. I’m a novelist. I’m a photographer. The Real Estate Novelist series combines all three. It’s where I take portrait photographs of houses and buildings, in their landscape, as they are.

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ONE NIGHT AT dinner I explained, at length, to my wife that a house nearby to where I grew up had suddenly been knocked down. This was of no great importance in itself, houses are knocked down all the time, but what I felt the need to explain was that this house had been completely razed, and so too had every square centimetre of the block, so that instead of a house and trees, bushes and flowers, weeds and sheds, there was now bare exposed earth. “That earth,” I said, “has not seen the sun, or breathed clear air, for fifty or sixty years.” I was likely near the end of my second glass of wine by this stage, admittedly. Which is partly why my voice had a subtle hint of sadness to its tone, as if I felt sorry for that earth, and for the fact that it had been unable to breathe in so long, and would only be able to do so for a short while – before the next, larger, building smothered it again.

But there was more to this reflection than drunken melancholy; the sight of this knock-down cut to a deeper place in me. When I was thirteen the family property that I adored was cut away from our family, never to be experienced again. And on a broader level: I’d noticed that everywhere and everything around me seemed to be getting slowly knocked over and rebuilt, so that – gradually – all my remembrances of things past seemed to one by one be vanishing. The primary school that I attended was knocked down and re-built to a completely different design. The high school that I attended was too knocked down and re-built to a completely different design. The trees that I’d climbed and hidden myself in as a kid had been cut down. Even the homes of my childhood friends had been subdivided or knocked down entirely. I referenced some of the above to my wife – not for the first time – over dinner, and then said melodramatically

I OFTEN STOP and look at a house, as it stands, in the course of its life. It could be old, it could be new, it could be run down, it could be anything. I find all kinds of houses, in all kinds of repair, beautiful, in their own way. The only time houses are deliberately photographed though, in general, is when they’re For Sale, or if a builder or architect wants to document their work. I

decided to start photographing houses for the love of them. For the dignity of them. I started photographing them, basically, out of respect.

I also saw, around where I live, a great number of houses being demolished. With some of these houses then it was a “last chance to see” moment. I’d see a house standing in beautiful light and think, If I don’t capture it now, I might never get the chance again.

I took a photo of a house in Altona and, within a couple of weeks, it was demolished. I’ve looked at this photo a lot since; it was old and overgrown, but I’ve developed an affection for it, even though it’s now gone. It feels as though it was a privilege to capture it, sitting there in the sun, on what turned out to be its death bed.

When I first started taking pictures of houses, I was often frustrated when cars (or people) were in the way of the shot.

I slowly realised that cars weren’t in fact marring the shot; they were making it.

I often now deliberately include cars in these portraits of houses and buildings. It seems natural to include people too, if they walk into frame.

This is how the Real Estate Novelist photographic series came to be. Real Estate Novelist is a portrait series of houses, cars and people in their landscape, taken by a writer and novelist. I made this series for the love of it. I find these buildings and cars, these lines, these colours and these textures, exquisite.