Some weeks ago I came across Elke Morris’s photographs of houses; for days straight I could not stop staring at the structure of Domicile I (below), glowing within my computer screen.
…they look like toys, like internally sunlit dioramas.
Homes are important to me, in all their holdings of memory, dense/closed/private narrative, their stiff boxiness. Morris’s homes are inaccessible and perfect as they shimmer just beyond the grasp of realistically perceived space.
And all of a sudden I’m realizing the relevance of toys to the larger picture of my aesthetic interests and obsessions — the vibrantly colorful plastic plaything, the thing for thing’s sake that is this manufactured model/replica/figure. They demand attention.
What does it mean to convert these houses and homes into a litter of people-less miniature trinket stages?
It is of little surprise that Morris’s photos resonate.