This is How I Want to Live.

Flea Market Style

Emily Chambers with words by Ali Hanan, photos by Debi Treloar

Ryland Peters & Small, Inc.: New York

2005

So, in terms of text this book reads like an article in a women's magazine. Kind of like "oooooooooooooooo! Have you ever thought of not buying something new? Because there's this new fad where you shop at local markets! Here're some tips on how to do it!"

So I won't bother quoting any of it.

The photos, though, make me want to move in.

The photographs are light and make appealing compositions out of some rather crowded spaces. The size of the space and the amount of clutter is standard for most houses, I reckon, but not for most interior design/interior decorating, the kind that makes it into contemporary design books tends to be huge and minimalist, and not so helpful as a book like this. It's hard to find books full of photographs of the interiors of normal houses, though it strikes me as I write this that maybe I should have been looking at Home & Garden magazines all along?

I quite like this way of photographing a bed. I had never thought about photographing a bed being difficult, but one of the architecture photography books I looked at pointed out that it is essentially one is attempting to make a big rectangle look interesting. I'm not sure if becoming aware of that makes photographing beds harder or easier, but I like them a lot less now.

I prefer the flatter compositions to whole room shots. This could be a bad thing, I'll post some belated  email correspondence with my client in a second.