Book Review: Martyn Thompson's WORKING SPACE

 Working Space: An Insight into the Creative Heart Hardie Grant, 2013), takes a journalistic approach to showcasing the work spaces of 24 creatives from different fields of endeavor.

Martyn Thompson, who hails from Australia with stop-overs in Paris and London, has been in the States for 14 years. His photography has been seen in Arch Digest, W, The New York Times and Vogue. His clients have included Hermes, MAC Cosmetics, Ralph Lauren, Tiffany & Co. among others. His lens has captured the true nature of a working environment, clutter and computer cords and all. Work is work, it's not always pretty. We on blogs, and in shelter publications, often showcase beautiful and organized work spaces. But, as Albert Einstein famously asked "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?" Probably not a creative or productive one. (says the girl with the perpetually cluttered office...)

But having said that, I'm going to start with photos of the most beautiful (and tidy) working space in the book.

Killer, right? This is the Paris apartment/home office of Capucine Geagea an editor who launched her online magazine Plume Voyage from this room.  Le sigh... The French just know how to mix modern with classic, minimal with maximal. 

And another amazing space - less fancy but no less dreamy in its way - the work space of The Gaabs, a creative consultancy run by husband Marcus, a photographer, and wife Christiane, an art director.

I'd kill for a decent place to store all my books!