Photo Finish
Photographer Matthew Williams isn’t one to bow to accepted wisdom, specially when it comes to decorating an inner-city pad.
Words: Kate Coughlan Photographs: Matthew Williams
FRAMING THE VIEW, composing the shot, controlling the light to create magic … these are the disciplines successful photographers bring to their work. And here, in the home of freelance photographer Matthew Williams, the picture is a perfectly composed, lit and controlled sum of its parts. Yet this is apartment living at the affordable end of the Auckland market: a busy main thoroughfare, an entry buzzer pad showing at least three dozen other apartments in this block, concrete stretching away in the distance with the spatial perspective of rail tracks and door after door to other apartments.
Soulless? Lacking in charm and character? Hard to live in? Not this warm and cosy space. With his photographer’s eye and some clever decorating and purchasing on the part of his girlfriend Allison Hirsch (who lives nearby), Matthew has taken a small, two-bedroomed concrete rectangle and turned it into a home. “I wanted it to be dark rather than light. I think it is a myth that if you’ve got a small space – and this is tiny, just one room really – you make it all white then it looks bigger. I wanted it to be cosy.”
So Matthew, aided by the talented Allison, painted his apartment in variations of black. The kitchen-dining-living area is shiny black, his bedroom is a greenish-black and the second bedroom (functioning as his office) is a dark brown-black. The curtains are flimsy with black silk tassels; a collection of historic black-and-white photographs of Auckland does not disturb the careful palette; neither does a black hat stand perching in the corner. A piece of art beneath the kitchen bench is hand-drawn by Allison and Matthew on blackboard paint. Even the floor is dark-stained timber.
Photographer Matthew Williams and his girlfriend,
Allison Hirsch: responsible for turning a tiny
apartment into a stylish and comfortable home.
Sounds grim but the result is sumptuous. This is the skill of the photographer in drawing the eye through the room, composing the shot within the black-walled space across a series of objects decreasing in height to come to rest in the pleasant courtyard garden. Framing, composition and lighting. Did we get magic? Absolutely. “I like the idea of looking out of windows into a green place. That is what my art does too.”
Matthew’s art photographs, exhibited at the Anna Bibby Gallery in Parnell, are massive works capturing the texture and layers of luxurious native bush.
In 2004 after a hectic seven-year stint in the fast lane of the advertising industry in London, Matthew returned to his home town Auckland to collect his breath. “I was completely burnt out after non-stop travelling (52 flights in one year) shooting for really big clients like Wembley [the giant UK betting and sporting conglomerate] and Hamleys [the famous toy store] and I made the mistake of not taking a holiday in all that time. People think it is glamorous, travelling round the world all the time in business class but after a while it is just lonely. So I decided to go for the peace-of-mind option versus the money option and come home. It has been fabulous. I just love the place. It is calm and simple and beautiful.”
