Domesticity

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How I Learned to be Creative While Stuck at Home

By Zeb Andrews

I could tell you that this adventure began out on a trail in the Columbia River Gorge, hiking and waterfalling and eventually straining my back in a way that gave rise to a nasty case of sciatica. I could also tell you that this all began in a dryer, in my laundry room. Both accounts would be true and accurate. The former was a beginning that I did not realize was a beginning at the time, the latter the first glimmers that would become that realization of a beginning.

This story starts with my back, or more specifically, my sciatic nerve. I am not a doctor, so I will not regale you with what meager medical lore I possess, thus speaking far outside of my realm of expertise. Suffice it to say that aggravating one’s sciatic nerve is something best avoided; it is on the list with root canals on your birthday, paying taxes late and bringing a knife to a gun fight. What I will share is that on a fine summer afternoon, while out hiking and photographing I strained my back and within a day I was largely immobilized. My world was the bed, or the floor, or whatever flat, horizontal surface I could inhabit for several hours. This was a debilitating experience, but not purely in a physical sense. It initially crippled me creatively as well. I am an active person and hence, an active photographer. My passion and joy lies at least a mile up a trail somewhere, surrounded by forest or at the base of a waterfall, or along some sandy ocean shore - with a camera in hand.

Pretty quickly into my case of sciatica I came to a bit of a crossroads. I had a certain decision I realized I must make. I could continue to lay on the floor, in pain physically, bored and miserable mentally. Or, I could choose to work within the limitations of my new normal and find ways to persevere and remain creative. This is something that is easier said than done. Not only was I dealing with a great deal of physical discomfort which did not leave me in much of a mood to pursue creativity, I was also stuck at home. Our homes are familiar places, but that familiarity can also bring with it boredom. We don’t typically think of photographing in our own homes because we are used to seeing everything there and it has become mundane to our eyes.

Many months later, thinking back on this episode, I decided that the pump on the creative well in my mind had been primed by seeing a specific series of work done by the photographer Abelardo Morell. Morell is perhaps best known for his Camera Obscura series, and if you haven’t seen it I am ok if you want to stop reading right now to go look it up, it is so worth your while. The project by Morell that I think planted a seed in my mind which germinated one day in my laundry room was his collection known as Childhood. Within that series there are three images that resonated. The first is of his children lying in the shadow of their home with added details to make it look like their actual home and not its shadow. The second is a photo of a toy horse, shot from a really low angle point of view. I had read Morell explain this image as part of a series he shot while crawling around his house photographing it from the point of view of a toddler. The third image is of two forks in a glass of water. It is so simple and beautifully photographed. It is something I see at home all the time; I would never have thought to make such an image. My appreciation for the images aside, it was the notion that compelling and beautiful work could be created from the normalcy found in one’s home and of one’s home that echoed back to me as I found myself stuck at home years later.

This hidden notion in my head, that home was not mundane but creatively ripe, became an image one day as I painfully stood in my laundry room looking with some degree of curiosity at my dryer. For some reason I wondered what the view from inside the dryer looked like. Even on my healthiest days I doubted I could fit inside the dryer to find out the answer to that question, so I limped off to grab my pinhole camera because it could go where I could not. The pinhole was the natural choice for that shot because I wanted both the wide angle field of view it offered and the long exposure. By dragging the exposure out I could safely place the camera and retreat out of the frame, moving fast enough to not register at all in the final image and therefore not obstruct the view out of the dryer. I could have used a camera with a self-timer, but at the time I was shooting a lot of pinhole and it just seemed a perfect fit for the image I wanted to see. That exposure was eight minutes and I stood just outside the dryer, out of view, patiently waiting through those eight minutes. Coincidentally, this would become the only Domesticity image that I am not visible within the frame.

The making of that dryer image, even though I had a week’s wait ahead of me to see the developed film, was a proof of concept moment for me. It switched on a light bulb. It should seem rather obvious that one can make pictures in or out of their dryer, but why would you? What is interesting about that? Standing there in my laundry room, waiting on that exposure to finish made me realize that I was genuinely curious to see how my pinhole camera rendered a scene that otherwise seemed so familiar to me. So I sat down and started making a list of all the other parts of my home that seemed unworthy of my curiosity. Within a short bit of work that list instead became one of all the mundane, daily activities that I engage in, working on auto-pilot with nary a thought to performing them other than that they must need be done. I started at the beginning of my day and wrote down everything I do from waking up, to showering, to eating breakfast, getting dressed, etc. It took me a little while because I composed the first list and then realized I had missed some items. You try listing all the mundane things you do everyday that you don’t think about and realize how hard it is to get every one of them on your first go. That list became essentially a scavenger hunt for me, a checklist of things to pay attention to, and with my pinhole camera at hand I set about to mark them all off.

I quickly discovered, much to my pleasure, that each of those daily activities presented a creative puzzle to solve. Being one of the first things I do every morning, making a picture of myself showering was one of the first such puzzles I tackled. I am not a voyeur in any sense of the word, so the task of photographing myself showering without making a nude self-portrait for all the world to see was my first concern. Close on its heels then was how to find an interesting perspective of showering. I actually photographed the shower image in two or three variations. I had a couple with the camera mounted above the shower head and one with the camera mounted under it. I was going off of intuition at this point, a sense that the odd perspective I wanted to see rendered was a fly’s point of view from over the shower. To this day it is one of my favorites of the series, I think because it represents the first real success of the Domesticity images. It captured exactly what I wanted: a new and interesting perspective (for me) of something I do all the time from a point of view I had never seen.

Then it was breakfast time. Again, operating largely off intuition, I set the camera up between me and my bowl of cereal, turning my breakfast into a foreground landscape of milk, cornflakes and freeze-dried strawberries. The ever-present and much enjoyed morning paper completed the tableaux with my son, who did not want to be photographed, attempting to hide behind a Robert Frank book. It was the perfect representation of the typical breakfast. At this point I had a couple successful takes under my belt and had started seeing the early photos developed and printed.

I kept working my way down or around my list. I did not necessarily work chronologically for as I mentioned above each item presented a creative puzzle to solve. “How do I make THAT look interesting?” I did not always have the answer and inspiration was sometimes fleeting. I slowly pieced the series together and I jumped around the list somewhat, going where inspiration did strike. I taped my camera to the ceiling one day for lunch because I had already set it down on the table for breakfast - I needed a different angle and I happened to look up. Likewise I taped it to the back of the sink just because I wanted to see if I could. I stood in front of the dishwasher for awhile and wondered how I could possibly get a shot from inside that while it was running. Eventually I decided it wouldn’t work. Even if I could keep the camera safe and dry there wouldn’t be any light - and yes, I did considered getting waterproof LEDs to illuminate the inside of my dishwasher while it ran. I did succeed at installing the camera inside the oven. That image was also made pretty early on when my back was in bad shape. I could not stay bent over, peering into the oven, for the entire length of the exposure so when I moved and straightened up I created multiple ghosts of myself outside the frame of the oven door. The camera went into the refrigerator (more than once). I made a self-portrait, again from the ceiling, of nap time. That was one of the easiest pictures I made, with the only hard part being not falling asleep before the exposure had completed. I even made a couple exposures involving daily toilet activities. I had to try at least. While they were creatively not explicit they also never turned out all that interesting. Maybe one day I will loop back around on them and take another stab at that part of this series.

Domesticity. 12:03pm. This exposure took several minutes and that one glass got washed extremely well.

Domesticity. 12:11pm. Drinking lots of water is good for you. I taped the camera to the bottom of the mason jar I was drinking out of. It sort of worked.

My point is that nothing was off-limits, I let it all be fair game. I did not want to limit myself as - due to my back - I was already limited. Plus at this point my curiosity was fully aflame. In fact, as my back healed and I began to move more quickly and with less pain, I kept on making these images. I eventually went back to work but I also always came home and there waiting for me was that list. Even without it, I was reminded of this work simply by doing the things I did every day. I would find myself in the midst of some mundane daily routine and I would suddenly realize that I had not photographed it, or had even thought to include it. That would then have me snatching up my pinhole, gears turning.

In all, I worked on this project for months. Some of these images show the passing of the seasons. I have my son’s January birthday party. Easter candy makes an appearance. Later on the family Christmas tree became the basis for a good half dozen different Domesticity images. I don’t often include those in this main body of work, they are more of a side branch because what I wanted to build was a representation of the “every day”, even if it took me a year of days to create the images. I wanted this sequence to be both interesting and mundane, like the activities they are documenting.

All days have an end, just as they have a beginning, and eventually I reached the end of my Domesticity day. I had not photographed every item on the list, and stragglers continued to emerge at the most random times, but I had covered it pretty thoroughly. It was a series that had served me well. It helped me navigate a difficult home confinement and turn it into a creative adventure. It stuck with me, long after my back pain had become but a memory, and influenced how I looked at my daily routine. It also became a staunch reminder that I had choices to make in my life, even when it did not seem like I had any options at all. It would have been easy to convince myself that being miserable with sciatica was the only choice I had. I think that there are times we are able to make ourselves believe that our options are limited thus I am thankful for this project showing me how untrue that usually is.

The ripples from Domesticity hung with me in other ways. Here and there I would add a new addition to the series. Or I would be inspired to turn it into assignments for photo classes I taught, telling my students that if they could learn to make interesting photos at home they would never want for a place to go to make pictures. It also shifted the notion of self-portraits for me. Before Domesticity I was not a fan of making pictures that I myself was in, but then somehow I ended up being in pretty much every single Domesticity image and I cannot really conceive of this series without my presence in them. It just wouldn’t be the same. There are many different ways to make a self-portrait, it turns out.

This is where I leave you: with the end of my day and the end of my thoughts. If we are fortunate something you have seen or read here will have planted a seed. I have no idea when it will sprout and turn into a full-fledged creative notion, but I hope that when it does it serves you well and many interesting and wonderful images result from it, just as it did for me.

Domesticity. 5:22pm. I eventually had to redo the first view of my fridge as it left me depressed with its generic bottle of Safeway pancake syrup and the other garbage food that showed up in that picture. I cleaned out the fridge and stocked it wit… — Domesticity. 5:22pm. I eventually had to redo the first view of my fridge as it left me depressed with its generic bottle of Safeway pancake syrup and the other garbage food that showed up in that picture. I cleaned out the fridge and stocked it with better ingredients and made this second image some time later.

Domesticity. 5:34pm. As much as I wanted the heating coils of the oven to be glowing, I never could figure out how to pull that off. Wooden cameras and hot ovens don’t mix well. A follower on Flickr once suggested I could sheathe the camera in an as… — Domesticity. 5:34pm. As much as I wanted the heating coils of the oven to be glowing, I never could figure out how to pull that off. Wooden cameras and hot ovens don’t mix well. A follower on Flickr once suggested I could sheathe the camera in an asbestos glove. That sounded like a bad idea as well.

Domesticity. 8:04pm. For some reason I have always liked this image as a self-portrait. Perhaps it is because I am barely noticeable, yet if you are looking for me in this image I am there, along with many other details of who I am. The camera is re… — Domesticity. 8:04pm. For some reason I have always liked this image as a self-portrait. Perhaps it is because I am barely noticeable, yet if you are looking for me in this image I am there, along with many other details of who I am. The camera is resting face down on top of a glass of water, by the way.

Domesticity. 8:06pm. Before you ask, no I do not shower and bathe in the same day. That would be very wasteful of water. But this image did pull inspiration from that earlier shower photo I had made.

Domesticity. 8:49pm. As I mentioned, these all became self-portraits but this I think is the only Domesticity image I ever made that included a self-portrait of the camera as well. I am glad it found a way to get in there. These photos wouldn’t exis… — Domesticity. 8:49pm. As I mentioned, these all became self-portraits but this I think is the only Domesticity image I ever made that included a self-portrait of the camera as well. I am glad it found a way to get in there. These photos wouldn’t exist without that Zero Image 2000 pinhole.

Domesticity. 10:29pm. And that is it, we are done.