Most of us would agree that, for better or worse, our houses speak for us. They are like a second face we present to the world. But when does a house become your home? It is the moment your house begins speaking to you—in an ongoing conversation propelled by the acquiring, arranging, and rearranging objects to express your personality in the spaces you inhabit. In
To Each His Home: Inspired Interiors as Unique as Their Owners, photographer Bilyana Dimitrova takes readers on a tour of eight extraordinary homes that unabashedly express the personalities of their free-spirited owners. Dimitrova's carefully crafted color photographs, accompanied by brief interviews with each homeowner, create vivid portraits of these one-of-a-kind American spaces.
Highly varied in nature, the distinctive and captivating homes featured in this book have one remarkable thing in common: none are the product of a professional interior designer. The homeowners in To Each His Home do not rely on professional training or draw inspiration from shelter magazines. Instead they allow their own likes and dislikes to guide their choices of furniture and fabrics, colors and configurations. They put the "I" back in interior design.
The homes included in this book are created by visual artists, a musician and a marionette maker, a painter, an inventor, a retired union steamfitter and former Golden Gloves welterweight champion, a visual merchandiser, and a retired stay-at-home mother of seven. Most evolved over long periods of time and continue to change as their owners add to and rearrange their spaces. Dimitrova captures these unconventional interiors in lavish large-format photographs accompanied by the homeowners surprising insights about their individualistic design processes. To Each His Home is an unusually personal collection of interior designs from a diverse range of locales—New York City, Los Angeles, Pennsylvania, Maine—each demonstrating the magic within our reach when we surround ourselves only with the things that we love.
Bilyana Dimitrova is an accomplished architectural photographer and the photo editor of Metropolis magazine. After studying at Bard College with critically acclaimed photographers Stephen Shore and Larry Fink, she received on-the-job training in the studio and archive of top architectural photographer Paul Warchol. In 2000 she began shooting regularly for the "Shelter" column in The Village Voice, and in 2001 she opened her own studio. The project from which this book emerges melds Dimitrova's academic training and professional interests, and represents more than eight years of work.
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Editorial Reviews
Rooms of Their Own, Metropolis:
"Almost all architectural photographyespecially of residential interiorsinvolves a healthy dose of fiction. These images are, in the crudest sense, product shots, idealized versions of a space or building that are closer in spirit to advertising and promotion than straight journalism. While not necessarily bad or immoral, this practice often results in images that raise the question: Who lives like that?Bilyana Dimitrovas new book, To Each His Home: Inspired Interiors as Unique as Their Owners (Princeton Architectural Press), celebrates a sort of DIY sub version of the Architectural Digest aesthetic. Dimitrovaa former photo editor at Metropolis and certainly no stranger to the iconic imagemeticulously documents eight residences, none of them created by professional designers but all of them very much designed (if your definition of design includes a fierce, almost theatrical, sense of purpose). I wanted to find homes that I was fascinated and excited by, the 31-year-old photo grapher says. More than anything, it was that heightened intentionality that I responded to."
— Martin C. Pedersen (December, 2008)
Free People:
"We are loving this new book by friend of Free People, Bilyana Dimitrova called To Each His Home. The book highlights eight really imaginative homes with beautiful photographs by Bilyana. Above are some sneak peak images of the book. You can see more on the website. Wouldn't you love to live in one of these?"
(November 14, 2008)
Midwest Book Review:
"(To Each His Home) tours eight lovely homes that express their owners personalities, blending color photos with interviews with each homeowner and surveying American spaces and different choices in color, setup, and styles."
— James A. Cox (February, 2009)
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