Fifty Feet From My Front Door

Echinacea, my driveway

August 2019

After we signed the contract to purchase our house in March of 1999, I kept driving by to see what was blooming in front of the house: daffodils, hyacinths, tulips. I was excited that we would have our own place and our own garden. I grew up a city dweller though we spent summers and ski-weekends in Vermont. At first, we had a unit in a ski resort co-op and not much chance to grow things. When I was 13, my parents bought an old Vermont farmhouse and we planted trees, bushes, herbs, geraniums in pots, and a vegetable garden. There was a row of old-fashioned double daffodils, and a few black raspberry plants left over from previous inhabitants. It was there that I developed the feeling that much of what makes a house a home has to do with what is outside. 

Looking back over the past 20 years, I can see that I’ve made many of my photos within 50 feet of the front door of our house. Sometimes I step outside, sometimes I shoot through the windows. I could say “Home is where the flowers and trees and ferns and bushes grow”. We planted a strip of perennials next to the driveway about 15 years ago. At first the echinacea (purple coneflowers) struggled for a foothold, but they began to grow exuberantly when the climate around here changed towards cooler, damper growing seasons. I find these flowers to be very expressive—in this group I see a parent trying to keep track of dear ones. 

What kinds of photographs have you made in and around your home? How do they express your feelings about it? If you were to set out to make a series of photographs that specifically address the idea of home, what would they look like?