Four&Sons

Is your house the window to your soul? Or is it the belongings you have carefully, or not so carefully decided to place in it which make it a home? We would need to say they are. They represent us, our life and interests, our travels, family, friends and lovers.

So when the realisation hits that your house is burning to the ground in front of your eyes, when all lucidity is transformed to sheer basic instinct, which items do you grab that will represent all you have left? Robert Holden decided to find out.

Robert created The Burning House, a project inviting people to upload pictures (and a listing) of those items they would save if such incident really occured. A series of pictorial resumes, the site is insatiably addictive, akin to reading a diary entry purposefully left open, or peaking into someone’s medicine cabinet where the door is left ajar; intriguing for what it reveals of each person, both in its inclusions and omissions.

You realise a perfectly worn-in pair of shoes, tee shirt and boots are covetable objects the world over. We are drawn to our ‘instrument’ of expression, being a camera, a honed in cello, a weathered book, a vintage piece of clothing. Dogs and children seem to go without saying.

However, the thought process that has been allowed the person to consider in this scenario is a luxury not afforded the person who’s really experiencing crisis of this magnitude. So it has to be said, the project is perhaps undermined by the fact that it can never truly duplicate reality.

Fascinating in its many facets, what strikes me is the aesthetic involved in the placement of each item, spaced and thought out considered in minute detail. The site soothed my heart for it distils a fraction of the essence of what it means to be human — nostalgic, sentimental, and emotional — and for a change, I liked what I saw.

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theburninghouse.com