Prospect Cottage: Derek Jarman's House is the first extensive photographic document of Jarman's interior world at Dungeness — a space that functioned as both home and artwork, closed to the public until photographer Gilbert McCarragher was invited in following Keith Collins's death in 2018.
About This Book
Prospect Cottage in Dungeness is best known for the garden Derek Jarman cultivated there — a wild, sculptural landscape that has become one of the most celebrated artists' gardens in the world. But the house itself remained private, its interior unseen. This book finally opens that door. Organised room by room, Gilbert McCarragher's photographs reveal an interior that Jarman himself conceived as a kind of camera: dark within, light entering through calculated openings. Where the garden speaks to Jarman's engagement with the external world, the house reads as something more interior — a spatial self-portrait, a condensed expression of his worldview. Reflective essays accompany the photographs, drawing out the history of the cottage and the experience of working within it.
Key Features
- 192 pages of room-by-room documentary photography of Jarman's cottage interior
- Photography and text by Gilbert McCarragher
- Published by Thames & Hudson, 2018
What You'll Discover
- How Jarman conceived the cottage's interior as a camera — its dark core shaped by deliberate, measured openings of light
- The relationship between the garden as external universe and the house as private, inward world — two halves of a single artistic vision
- The poignant history of the cottage after Jarman's death, including its stewardship by Keith Collins, who made only one alteration: curtains to block the gaze of garden visitors
- What it means to photograph a space that is itself an artwork — McCarragher's reflections on access, restraint, and recording a world that had remained undisturbed
About the Author
Gilbert McCarragher is a photographer and neighbour of Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, who was asked to document the house following the death of Keith Collins in 2018. This book represents the first time a photographer had been given such extensive access to the cottage's interior.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 192
- Dimensions: 24.5 x 18 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780500027233
- Publisher: Thames & Hudson
- Publication Date: 2018
Perfect For: Architects, artists, and design researchers drawn to the intersection of domestic space and artistic identity; readers interested in Derek Jarman's work, artists' homes, or the photography of interiors charged with personal history.