Down the Long Driveway documents beautiful old Modernist houses

Date
27 January 2015

Architectural photography can often feel elitist at best and stuffy at worst, so imagine our delight to come across this new book Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It, by New Zealand-born, Montpellier-based photographer Mary Gaudin.

The book catalogues a collection of mid-century New Zealand houses which “aren’t new, they’re old and lived in,” in Mary’s own words. “They can be a little dusty, slightly worn around the edges and all have what antique dealers like to call ‘patina.’ But they’re perfect in the minds of the people who live in them because of what they represent, which when designed, was a better way of living.”

True to her description the shots feature pen pots, slightly skewiff pictures and toy cars surreptitiously posing behind walls in a celebratory display of what these architectural masterpieces look like once they’re removed from the pages of an interior design book and lived in instead. Which, as Mary continues, was the idea behind it. “The idea for the project wasn’t so much to document the houses in purely architectural terms, but to give an idea of the way these houses were and are lived in, as well as showing details of the designs and the materials used in their construction.”

The sweetly colloquial title refers to an email from one of the house’s owners directing Mary towards it, compounding the friendly atmosphere which seems to permeate each image. Designed by The International Office and accompanied by text by Matthew Arnold, the book is a really lovely portrait of a very specific time and place, and it makes for some excellent Pinterest fodder.

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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Mary Gaudin: Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It

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About the Author

Maisie Skidmore

Maisie joined It’s Nice That fresh out of university in the summer of 2013 as an intern before joining full time as an Assistant Editor. Maisie left It’s Nice That in July 2015.

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