House Portraits Dossier:
The Indian Novelist's House
La Ciotat
Bouches du Rhône
The focus of this house is the verandah and the walk down steps to an oddly-shaped, very large swimming-pool whose diving-board points back at the house.
Your gaze is drawn three very distinct ways: towards the sea from under a parasol, back to the house from the diving-board, and, between the two on any walk, up towards the vast sky of the Bouches du Rhône, craning your neck to find an edge, catching only the roof-top of the tower of the house. Hence, three panels set in frames the three colours of the tricolor! In a final arrangement I dislocated the roof-top from the tower, to suggest the craning of the neck, putting that top panel upside down... Et voilà!
Sketches
Above, the final deciding moment was when I decided to have the roof of the tower, in the top panel, upside down - so that you are told of the way your head cranes up to see it!
