A great decorating editor and a good friend used to get caught digging around in people’s personal effects on photo shoots all the time. I received phone calls from outraged homeowners, declaring, “He went through my drawers!” I didn’t condone it, of course, but it was usually harmless nosiness—a kind of 10th grade infatuation with females that, as a gay man, had more to do with women’s boudoirs than their bodies. Snoopy decorating editors aside, photo shoots by their very nature are intrusive. We fling open kitchen cabinets looking for the right crystal and china. We send people scurrying to find plain linen napkins to replace the chintz ones they’d so foolishly laid out on the table. Often, when they return with a few sad napkins found tucked away in a closet, the uncomfortable looks on their faces say it all: My house is a total failure. The truth is, despite what you see in magazines, no one’s house is as fabulous as it seems. Much of the time we have a stylist who brings in additional accessories and furniture to fill the empty spots. We rearrange everything so that it looks best in the camera. Decorators hate this, but when they see the photos later they understand.
The camera doesn’t necessarily lie; nor does it tell the whole truth. We once shot the innovative, but low-rent apartment of two design students. It ended up looking like a million-dollar design job by Kelly Wearstler. After seeing the film, our art director wagged his finger at me reproachfully, saying, “I thought you said they were students.” Houses, like people, have a good side. The best photographers find and exploit it.
Sometimes you just gotta shoot the room, no matter what’s going on. Take for instance the Dallas socialite who waited until the last hour on the last day of shooting to let us into the master bedroom, announcing that she would be retiring for the evening. Then she crawled under the covers. In haste, I made up the side of the bed where she wasn’t, fluffed the pillows and shoved piles of magazines and newspapers from the side table out of view of the camera. Flowers were plunked into a vase. The photographer aimed the camera into a mirror on the opposite wall, which reflected only half the room and, hence, half the bed. It turned out to be a great photograph.
We’re all voyeurs. Decorating magazines capitalize on the desire to peek inside people’s houses and under the slipcovers. That’s one reason why “Before and After” stories are popular. The “Befores” can be so awful—what these ugly shots are saying is: Hey, you’re not so bad. At least you don’t have rust shag carpeting like this guy. It’s about validation.
Even I’m not immune from it. I was secretly delighted to find a ragtag assemblage of wine glasses in the home of a chic woman whose Turtle Creek residence we photographed. The maid had, during time, broken all of the Baccarat, and that was that. But what I loved about her dearth of nice stemware was that it confirmed my own style-deprived childhood, when our glasses at home were mismatched, and not because the maid had smashed the French crystal. No matter how lavish or unattainable the houses, we look for bits of ourselves in the rooms. If you knew that one high-profile Dallas family stashed hundreds of magazines and catalogs under sofas, beds, and skirted chairs all over the house, would you feel better about your own clutter? Of course. If you realized that another fashionable couple had literally tacked their draperies to the wall to get ready for our photo shoot, would you feel a bit smug? Sure. One style icon whose mid-century modern house I photographed years ago had a closet devoted to nothing but white t-shirts. There must have been 200, hanging on 200 wire coat hangers. Wire coat hangers have always been a secret shame in my house, but this man not only made them okay, he made them beautiful. I’d have never known it if I hadn’t opened that closet door.
