Creative, commercial photographers.

How a good roomset photographer manages to set the tone

April 15, 2010

When creating a roomset becomes the subject of high art, the whole world of interior design moves up a hierarchical notch or two. Tom Calvocoressi, writing in the New Statesman, recently discussed his own experiences of installation artist Mike Nelson’s labyrinthine work entitled ‘The Deliverance and the Patience’ which took the viewer through a fairly ordinary door and into a succession of weird interconnected often windowless roomsets. Viewers became part of the experience itself as they wandered through from room to room.

Calvocoressi described the emptiness of the rooms, apart from the sets themselves, as creating a Marie Celeste-like sense of absence for the viewer, with the impression that someone had just left but also that something unpleasant may have occurred in each room. However he also recalls a sense of intrusion as though he were arriving uninvited into someone else’s life.

A good roomset photographer will always strive to create a sense of intrusion for the viewer where roomsets appear to be lived in rather than stage set. The whole intention, of course, is to promote a lifestyle and sell the contents of the page to the viewer with the possibility of being able to recreate a similar design in their own home. Although Nelson’s piece tends more towards the seedier side of humanity to create a sense of catharsis and loss, his intention as an installation artist is similar to that of the roomset photographer where both seek to strike a chord with the viewer by taking them into a succession of rooms.