John Maher: Nobody’s Home

By Neil Cooper, 23.08.2022

Nobody's Home © John Maher, courtesy of Street Level Photoworks.

The landscape has changed since John Maher first took his photographic studies of abandoned and derelict houses on the islands of Lewis and Harris that make up his exhibition, Nobody’s Home. Almost a decade on from its first showing in 2013 at An Lanntair, on Lewis, presented in tandem with work by fellow photographer Ian Paterson, the current selection of twenty-eight images by Maher at Dunoon Burgh Hall (DBH) is a glimpse of a world that has largely been demolished.

“It's probably two or three years since I last went back to revisit some of the houses,” says Maher, “but there's a point where that decay gets to a stage where it doesn't become photographically interesting to me. For instance, there's one that’s got a yellow Rayburn stove as the focal point of the picture, but the last time I went there, the ceiling had collapsed, and the floor had gone through. If it had been in that state when I originally looked in, I probably wouldn't have bothered taking a picture.

“There are some that are continually falling apart, and there are others that have been knocked down. There's one I can think of, there's actually a new contemporary style house been built in its place. So I think Nobody’s Home was about documenting things at a certain point in time before it was too late. If you wanted to go and duplicate the photographs today, it's not possible.”

Since it was first shown, Nobody’s Home has been seen in Dunfermline, Cumbria, at The Lighthouse in Glasgow, and at Talla Na Mara in Harris. The photographs also attracted the attention of homeless charity, Shelter, and Western Isles housing body, Tighean Innse Gall. Maher spoke at a Shelter conference in Edinburgh, while Tighean Innse Gall asked Maher if they could use one of his images on the cover of its annual report.

This further captured the imagination of those within the organisation, and, in conjunction with the Carnegie Trust, saw them renovate around 160 derelict properties to make them liveable once more. More recently, Maher became the figurehead of a community bid to purchase a Harris estate from its absentee landlord.

This is a far cry from Maher’s past as drummer with Manchester proto punk band, Buzzcocks, who pretty much invented their era’s DIY scene with their Spiral Scratch EP before releasing a series of hormonally charged pop-punk classics.

Maher later moved into building performance engines for drag racing Volkswagens. He has lived on Harris for more than twenty years, running John Maher Racing inbetween various adventures in photography.

The current iteration of Nobody’s Home is presented by DBH as part of an ongoing partnership with Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow. While Maher’s images remain evocative of a lost era, it is unlikely any of his subjects are likely to survive.

“I think sometimes people looking at my photos can get a little bit misty eyed about what’s in them,” says Maher. “The truth is the vast majority of the stuff that I photographed, with the best will in the world, wouldn't be suitable to be renovated because a lot of them were completely beyond repair. Building standards today are much different to when these things were originally built, so a tin shack with a hardboard ceiling that's the only thing that's between you and the great outdoors, you're never going to renovate that.”

Maher was recently invited by one of his neighbours to photograph the interior of his newly built house before they moved in.

“I gave the image the title of ‘Future Ruin’,” says Maher. “Ultimately, that's what any new house is, isn't it? Hopefully it’ll last a long, long time, but in the years to come, there may well be some idiot like myself wandering around in it when it's falling to bits.”

John Maher - Nobody's Home is on at Dunoon Burgh Hall until 4 September. Discover more about John Maher here.