Space explorer

Award-winning interiors photographer Tessa Chrisp has spent her fair share of time inside some of New Zealand’s most beautiful homes.

Award-winning photographer Tessa Chrisp has spent a fair amount of time inside some of New Zealand’s most beautiful homes. As a regular photographer for NZ House & Garden, she’s adept at capturing the beauty and personality of such houses. Her bach-style home in Piha, West Auckland, is full of creativity and is a place she calls her sanctuary.

How did you get into photography?

I was always attracted to the arts. As a 7-year-old, I was drawing probably quite bad pictures for my parents’ guests to take home and wanted to be a photographer when I grew up – perhaps due to my father’s collection of National Geographic magazines which I loved looking through. Even though there was no photography in the curriculum at high school, an art teacher saw my passion for photography and encouraged me to pursue it, which lead to receiving honours for my photographic contribution to the school. I worked for a photographic portrait studio in the school holidays and became a lab technician and then applied to design school at the Wellington polytech (now Massey University). I think out of 300-odd applicants 14 of us were chosen, and as an 18-year-old, I remember feeling pretty stoked.

How did you become specialised in photographing houses and gardens?

For a long time, my strong points have been and still are people, lifestyle and travel. A lot of travel and lifestyle assignments include architecture or interiors, so it was a natural progression to shoot more of it. I am always looking for the beauty in things, spaces and faces – that is my natural way of looking at things. I find it a privilege being in people’s private homes to capture their personal environment.