Big Picture: Fridges, by Stéphanie de Rougé

If a photographer who was taking your portrait at home asked to shoot the inside of your fridge, too, would you let her? A quarter of Stéphanie de Rougé’s subjects declined – it was a little too intrusive, they felt. This was a revelation: clearly, de Rougé concluded, the fridge is one of the more intimate spaces in a home. →
Photograph: Stéphanie de Rougé/twobytwovideo.co.uk

She appears to have been on to something. In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell suggests that we can learn more about someone by spending 15 minutes poking around their home than by getting to know them over a year. It’s the little things that give us away – just ask anyone who has nosed around a new partner’s bookshelf or bathroom cabinet. →
Photograph: Stéphanie de Rougé/twobytwovideo.co.uk

De Rougé photographed fridges in two cities, Paris and New York. You might think you could draw lazy conclusions about the food-loving French and takeaway-mad New Yorkers – and you’d be mostly right. →
Photograph: Stéphanie de Rougé/twobytwovideo.co.uk

An extended family gathered for the weekend outside Paris has a fridge filled with oozing cheeses, piles of vegetables and plump saucissons. Some New York fridges, de Rougé discovered, are empty, like props in a Bret Easton Ellis novel. →
Photograph: Stéphanie de Rougé/twobytwovideo.co.uk

But it was the non-food items that were the most interesting. Rolls of photographic film, stored at optimum temperature, were common, but naked Barbie dolls? “It was, I think, something personal between the woman and her husband,” de Rougé says delicately. →
Photograph: Stéphanie de Rougé/twobytwovideo.co.uk

Elsewhere, a fashion-mad Parisian jewellery designer stores silk scarves and velvet jackets alongside her yoghurt, white wine and mineral water. They last longer that way, apparently. →
Photograph: Stéphanie de Rougé/twobytwovideo.co.uk

Many fridges resemble their owners, de Rougé believes. Certainly, the well-kept madame in her Paris apartment has an orderly fridge to match; and the generous family gathered around a pool table matches the bounty of their fridge. →
Photograph: Stéphanie de Rougé/twobytwovideo.co.uk

One young Frenchman in a warehouse apartment dispenses with food altogether, and uses his unplugged fridge as a small wardrobe. It reminds me of friends who store bread in their oven. Rather sensible, if you ask me. →
Photograph: Stéphanie de Rougé/twobytwovideo.co.uk