The Domestic Stage: How the home became photography’s new frontier

Typically, we think of home as an intimate place – somewhere we retreat to at the end of the day, to rest and recuperate. “It is traditionally seen as a private space,” the curator and researcher Adam Murray tells Dazed, “somewhere we can escape the pressures of a daily performance.” But over the last 20 years, with the rise of reality TV and then social media, we’ve started to see more and more of other people’s domestic lives, and share more of our own in turn.

We’re living in a world of “post-privacy”, as Murray characterises it in his new book The Domestic Stage. This means that, for many of us, the performance never ends. What we wear, how we act, and the furniture and objects we surround ourselves with are carefully curated for an imagined audience. Think of the TikTok influencer who cooks dinner in a head-to-toe look lifted straight from the catwalk (and serves it on Gustaf Westman tableware, naturally). Or the public speaker who arranges their bookshelf to project a certain image over Zoom.

The Domestic Stage brings together the work and words of 22 image-makers, spanning from the 1990s to present day, to explore this relatively new phenomenon through the lens of fashion photography. “One of the aims of the book is to argue that fashion image doesn’t exist in a bubble, that it is part of a global network of visual culture that is influenced by the art world, vernacular image-making and technology,” Murray explains. “I think there is an ongoing dynamic relationship between all of this.”

The project formed around a core of several key photographers – including Malerie Marder, Nigel Shafran, Sarah Jones, and Tierney Gearon – while he was researching a different project on fashion photography in the late 90s. “Then Covid happened,” he says, offering a new lens. “Domestic space took on a whole new role is our lives, consequently informing new work that was being made.” The book illustrates this shift by placing contemporary references, including stills from The Kardashians and portraits of artist Jesse Glazzard, alongside imagery by more established artists like Corinne Day and Carrie Mae Weems.

“It’s important to recognise that fashion image being set in a domestic environment isn’t specific to a couple of years,” adds Murray. But it’s undeniable that it’s reached a new level of visibility in that time, coming to serve as a ‘third space’ for fashion photography alongside the street and the studio, offering up new opportunities for creative expression and storytelling in the process.

Before, as Murray points out: “Even if we wanted everyone to see inside our homes, we didn’t have the means to broadcast to a mass audience. Now, of course, it is not only aspirational to show off our homes, but we have the tools to do this, we are not reliant on gatekeepers such as magazines or television shows.”  In this sense, The Domestic Stage shows how changes in technology and culture have not only opened up the home to the voyeuristic gaze of the public, but also enabled us – artists and civilians alike – to share the places we hold most dear, where we might feel most comfortable to experiment and play.

The Domestic Stage is published by Thames&Hudson. Take a look at some highlights from the book in the gallery above.