Eulogy to the Home: A Window Into the Individual

Waking up and making coffee. Watching the sun rise. Drawing the buildings outside my window. Hosting dinners. Playing jazz music while cooking. Dancing around my apartment. These were the everyday things I was most excited about before coming to Menton. 

I spent so long waiting to enter my own apartment that I was surprised when I finally arrived and realized that it did not feel like mine. Instead, it felt like it belonged to the woman that had lived here for more than 30 years. Her presence seemed to be everywhere. 

A photograph of a white poodle hangs in our kitchen doorway. A small stuffed version of him with a tag reading “I love you” sits on our bookshelf. My roommate and I wonder what has happened to her beloved dog. I feel our former landlady's love for this dog throughout the home, and I feel a certain affection for him too. 

Her appreciation for music is equally clear. Busts of Mozart, Beethoven and other musicians can be found around the house. My roommate’s bedroom is decorated with musical notes. I feel our former landlady’s connection to Menton in the old photographs of our town that hang on the walls and in a plaque from the city paying homage to her and her husband for 50 years of marriage. Our mailing address names always end in hers; otherwise the mail won’t come. 

Since our arrival, much has changed. I bought a fan that is now permanently stuck at an angle, got blue-striped sheets and put away the statues of musicians that once adorned the living room so we don’t accidentally knock them over, though they still make an appearance when we have guests. Lollipops fill our shelves. Trash bags come and go; we had to get rid of our bins after an onslaught of bugs. Our colorful shoes fill the floor, with a growing assortment of package boxes. Every Wednesday our dining table turns into a math classroom, as we log in to Zoom with our honorary third roommate. 

And yet, our former landlady still inhabits and fills the home as much as she once did. I feel her when I sit down to eat, when I glance at her calendar on the fridge and when I open our mailbox, filled with letters addressed to her. We keep these letters in a pile on the mantel for her. They will never be opened, but they will stay there, evidence of her quiet accumulation. In this place she is still here, existing alongside my roommate and me. 

When we leave one day, we too might leave behind small parts of ourselves — physical ties to this place. Maybe these ties will intermingle with hers, and the home will become something greater than any one of us individually: a collective, a collection, a union of who we are. 

The Individual as Inseparable From the Place 

One of the most interesting things about acclimating to Menton has been watching students make  homes for themselves here. Whether it is a shared apartment with roommates, a studio, Villa Jasmin or Menton Plus, each space gradually becomes a reflection of the person living in it. 

I originally envisioned this project as simply visiting as many apartments around Menton as possible and photographing their interiors. I pictured myself running around town, spending 10 minutes in each apartment, taking photographs and leaving. I saw the end result as a collection of graphic design and visuals. 

But when I arrived, the conversations I had with people resonated with me more than the spaces alone. To inhabit someone’s space was not only to intentionally examine as much as I could, but to become deeply aware of the person who lived there. In many instances, the individual took center stage. I watched people move through their homes and saw beauty in the way they looked out the window, smiled at their favorite stuffed animal, recounted a story from their life or caught their reflection in the glass. When you enter another person’s home and reality, there is a new layer of sincerity and connection that you attain. You begin to understand someone not just through what they tell you, but through the objects they surround themselves with, the rituals they create and the ways they move through a space that is uniquely theirs. 

While we are an incredibly diverse student body, each of us uniquely ourselves, there is also a sense of unity I have found in our apartments that surprised me. The many stuffed animals, photo booth photos, flags, foods from around the world, keys that all resemble each other, paintings from owners, knickknacks left behind, the table we sit at – or don’t – to focus on homework and the ground-floor windows connect us all. 

The following images show the homes of Jade Werba; Masi Hachour and Warrick Low; Hrncsár Hanna Boróka and Soleia Chong; Maddy Norton and Aoife Westover; Konsti Szabo and Lorenzo Caselli; Anouk Sethi and Inez Stephenson. 

I hope that through these photos you are able to glean a little bit of the joy that comes from observing, appreciating and engaging with another person’s life. 

Photo Source: Anouk Sethi