“For as long as I can remember, I have had a preoccupation with domestic interiors. As a child, I constantly rearranged the furniture, rugs, and even functions of the rooms in my house. Looking back, it seems to have been an effort to transform my surroundings at a time when not much else was in my power. My long-term photographic project looks at the ways we arrange our most intimate spaces. Our tastes, personalities, quirks and culture are expressed through our décor choices – sometimes intentionally, but often without realizing bits of our most authentic selves have seeped to the surface.”

- Sarah Malakoff


We’re in a time of collective indoor introspection. Perhaps you find yourself musing over your bookshelves, or the shaft of light that moves across your living room. Maybe you’ve been wondering when and why you chose to live with the particular objects that surround you. We’ve all been doing a bit of wall-staring lately, and this week, we’re looking at a master of the art.

Sarah Malakoff has been creatively tuned in for years to the revelatory nature of décor and personal interior space. Malakoff examines living spaces with a refined sense of humor but also with genuine affection. She photographs idiosyncratic rooms that seem to have been resolutely chosen by the residents years ago and then fixed in place.

In her book, ​‘Second Nature’, Malakoff focuses on décor that reproduces or highlights things from the natural world. We see a stump transformed into a coffee table. A private bedroom offers a bucolic mural. We peek in on a black cat, lounging on a leopard rug beneath a jaguar planter. Each home is completely distinct, but the common human longing to be close to nature is on display throughout the project. For those currently quarantined inside, these nature substitutes may not seem so silly. We’re hungry for the world. And we’ll accept facsimiles.

Windows feature brightly in the work, accentuating the interior / exterior divide, escorting the real world into the picture. These views into the woods or the snow form a tension between the genuine article and the more comfortable, fictional nature inside.

My two year old has lately been into the 70’s children’s book ​“The Big Orange Splot” by Daniel Pinkwater. In the story, led by the bold moves of Mr. Plumbean, residents of a ​“neat street” begin to change their identical homes into fantastic reflections of their childlike dreams. The houses transform into a ship, a castle, a jungle… In the end, the street is just way better and every reader knows it. ​“My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams.” says Mr. Plumbean.

I keep thinking about Plumbean as I look through Second Nature. Home interiors can be intensely personal reflections of our inner selves. Despite the strange taste, I want to commend the invisible inhabitants in Malakoff’s imagery. Right on, you who chose a canoe for a coffee table, fur for your wallpaper, or a literal cave for your man-cave. A perfectly styled, minimalist, Real Simple sitting room has nothing on you.

We’re not all interior designers, but most of us make choices somewhere along the way about what we’d like to live with. In sharing the domestic spaces of others with such formal clarity and good humor, Malakoff also gently prods us to examine the motivation behind our own designs. For those who have the luxury to stay home during the quarantine, this may be a good time to study our own interior landscape with curiosity. Perhaps we’ll learn something about our dreams.

– Lisa

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