Major Practical Project - Living Normally

So I mainly purchased this book to get a bit of inspiration a while ago, but recently it has really come to inform the images I want to produce for this project.

This coffee-table-style book comprises of photographs documenting several different people's homes, alongside around a page of text comprising of a description of the person and their situation and also quotes from interviews with the subjects. The photographer, Niki Medlik, has specifically chosen people from a range of different backgrounds and whose living conditions vary. Something in common with all the houses though is the focus on living - documenting the item as they were found, and the houses as they were lived in. These are not show homes.
For me, it is the quote by Francis Bacon on the back of the book that I feel really relates to my personal project...

 "Houses are built to live in and not to look at..." certainly applies to my family home. However, it is the unique bits of my home, those things that I would find it difficult to describe with words, that make me feel nostalgic. The blown bulb in the kitchen that's been broken for about 5 years. The way the old, horrible wallpaper feels as I walk down the stairs. It's these unique things that I need to get across in photographs.
Here follows some examples of the imagery within 'Living Normally' that I can use as a reference point for my own photographs:

So although I don't feel that all of the images work from a technical perspective, what they do show me is that you can really get an impression of someone's home, and therefore their life, by simply looking at the little details. Rather than sweeping panoramas or wide angle shots of whole rooms, Medlik has focussed her attention right down to the tiniest details - a light switch, a dirty pan, a bathtub. This allows the viewer to build up a view of the rooms through several images, rather then just being given all the information in one. I feel the photograph of the cooker is the most interesting for me - very simply framed and quite clean composition, but telling the viewer everything they need to know about this part of the subject's house.
After looking through this book several times, I feel that the way I want to approach this project is to take lots of photographs, on several different occasions, and allow the audience's image of my home-life to grow gradually.

Naylor, T., Medlik, N., Living Normally (2007), Thames and Hudson, UK.