Interview by Nick Smith
Not everything is what it seems at the old pink house called Culzie Lodge on the shores of Loch Glass. Unfinished and abandoned, its windows are painted on in a trompe-l’oeil designed to trick passers-by into thinking this dilapidated shell of a building is a fairy tale home. Nestled in the bleak and lonely landscape of the Scottish Highlands, the pink house is the perfect subject for experimental photographer-artist Christophe Jacrot, who tends to take his photographs in the rain from behind the wheel of his car, using the smeared or dotted windscreen as a lens filter to create his idiosyncratic views of the world.
The pink house may have gone viral on social media – the Scottish Daily Express called it ‘one of the most Instagrammable buildings in the whole of Scotland’ – and it may have left its mark on the public with its appearance on The Traitors, but Culzie Lodge has never been seen the way Christophe portrays it. Neither has Paris, New York or Hong Kong. This is because bad weather is the 60-something artist’s subject. When asked why, he explains: ‘To paraphrase a famous painter, I don’t know how to explain my art. You’d have to ask my psyche.’
Read our interview with Christophe Jacrot in issue 306 of OP.