My intentions for the photos were to bring the viewer along with me on my journey to Roanoke. I hoped to communicate both the charm and the mystery that surrounds homes built in the 19th century. The Victorian Homes seem to have a personality and sometimes there was a feeling like each home had its own guardian angel that might have been a past resident. The old Victorian Homes seem to have a supernatural element as a part of their characteristics. A variety of films and TV shows have featured the lovely homes.
Alfred Hitchcock’s films often centered on a Victorian Home like the one in Shadow of a Doubt. Somehow, the old homes with their tall ceilings, beveled windows, and wrap around porches seemed to embellish the meaning of the word home. The art director for Hitchcock’s house was Robert Boyle and he said; “The house was literally designed around the shots, Hitchcock wanted to get inside it, the walls, windows, porch and roof swinging silently away in front of the moving camera. As a result, we get as clear a sense of the floor plan of the Newton home as any in American cinema.” The house was as much a star in Hitchcock’s movies as the actors. I love Uncle Charlie’s brilliant lines of; "what you'd find if you ripped the fronts off the houses". And who can forget the Bate’s House in his movie Psycho? http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue02/infocus/shadow.htm
The images did capture the mood I was trying to convey to a degree. I placed the frames to help the viewer feel as if they were walking around the grounds and getting a feel for the mysteries of the house. I felt a presence when I took the photos and thought about the possible levels of existence. The Others staring Nicole Kidman is a great representation of a ghost living in the same house with another family on another level of life. If I had placed the frames differently it would have told a different story. They are arranged in a way to have the viewer approaching the house and in the end watching it from afar.
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