ABSTRACT
The chapter of Bourdieu’s (1979) La Distinction entitled ‘Habitus and the space of life styles’ is headed by two pages offering a series of interior photographs, each showing family members in the living room, the dining room or the kitchen. Many contrasts spring to the eye. Dress, furniture, gesture, occupation – all serve to reveal the occupants of these spaces. They cannot hide anything from the lens of the photographer; they are at home and they are their homes, as revealed by stereotypes of the family hearth. Formica chairs, modern contours, wallpapers with designs of large flowers, meals in the kitchen, pin-stripe suits, check shirts or tablecloths, necklaces – not counting facial features, which as the title of another series of photos tells us, immediately suggest a ‘physique of the workplace’. The simple act of putting these on paper is in fact an amazing operation. These distinctions invade the pictures, being incorporated in hands, hairstyles, the bend of a back. They are objectivized in saucepans, curtains, shoes. Nothing is outside their scope. We see only them. The spontaneous reading we have of them indicates this clearly – lifestyles are in fact social classifications inscribed into our bodies and our belongings. Bourdieu is right.
