Sharp Focus: A Modern Home, Studio And Life

The simple and unassuming doorway of photographer Michael O’Neill and his wife Bia’s Wainscott home doesn’t hint at what lies ahead but for one telling detail: In place of a doormat, there’s a 2-ton boulder buried 5 feet deep so that just one blunt, sort of flat end juts out, a literal stepping-stone into an artist’s visionary home and studio.

Later, I learn he’s into rocks and stones in a big way. But let’s leave that for now. Because once you’ve crossed the threshold you’re immediately immersed into what is clearly a meticulously designed world. So we need to stay focused.

A wall of glass, 9 feet high and 23 feet across, can slide this way and that, opening the sharply rectangular view like a lens onto an Eden-like private reserve. No two trees are alike, yet they uniformly square off the property. We are in a capsule of modernity and serenity.

The pool alone is a dizzying list of wonders. The water is first ozonated, then infrared filtered, making it almost as chemical free as our drinking water. The retractable-topped wonder is designed by Steve Kenny of SRK Pools of Wainscott. “He’s a genius,” Mr. O’Neill assures me.

Across the yard is a mini-me of the main house. A rectangular block, clad in western red cedar with clear stain yields a slight tinge of ocher. The horizontal grain of the wood, accentuated by a grooved “reveal” planking method, is cut, Mondrianesque, if you will, by black-trimmed sliding glass doors that serve as the block’s edge. The perimeter fencing is stained to match. One thinks, “Why doesn’t everybody do this?”

There is also an attached, and charming, two-bedroom guest cottage with its own drive entry, in the shingle style. So while it is attached, it is not visible.

Precision. Simplicity. Discipline. Every element of this estate is keenly thought through.

But then I suppose that’s what you would expect from a world-class photographer who has reached the top of nearly every genre.

Having professionally grown up in what he calls “the guild system” of photographers that included Richard Avedon, Hiro and Irving Penn, Mr. O’Neill has done portraiture of world leaders (Nixon, Gorbachev), movie stars (Ben Affleck, Salma Hayek) and athletes (Michael Brown, Mike Tyson). Interesting note ... he was struck, in 1981, by Nixon’s “spontaneous humanity.” Go figure.

As a commercial photographer, his eye has been hired by HBO, Paramount Pictures, Death Row Records and Reebok.

And then there’s the print magazine world, where in addition to an 18-year stint as contributing photographer to The New York Times magazine, his images have appeared in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Fortune, Esquire, Time ... we’re barely scraping these lists.

But all this achievement and stark modernity is cut with the low-key casual life that Bia and Michael O’Neill lead.

Guests are greeted with Ms. O’Neill’s lilting Brazilian accent— “Come in, come in”—while Mr. O’Neill is hacking at some bamboo. No shoes. Strong coffee. Hugging.

As you go from room to room, you see that it is all of one piece. Geometric cutouts for windows allow light in from all directions, but not a single other residence is visible.

The master bedroom—“We call it our tree house,” Ms. O’Neill enthuses—has a giant slash of glass that captures sky, treetops and a bird’s-eye view of the studio.

The floor is some sort of cement dotted with what looks like resin that I don’t recognize.

“Here’s what happened,” Mr. O’Neill explains. “We had a poured cement floor, like everyone has in SoHo, but we were really unhappy with it, it was sloppy and uneven. We hired a nice guy who said he would try and grind it to see if he could even it out. After doing a little work he called and said, ‘What’s happening is that the naturally occurring pebbles in the cement are starting to emerge. I think we should keep sanding.’ It made a terrible, terrible mess, going down just ⅛ inch, but now look!”

I admire the waxy luminescent pale green wall behind the fireplace. It’s Venetian plaster done by Ms. O’Neill’s artist friend Gabriela Valenzuela. Taking out my reporter’s notebook, thinking I might provide readers with a decorating tip, I ask what the steps are in achieving a finish like this … “Oh no, she would not want to tell you, it is a secret.”

Very well, notebook away then. It’s time to head to the studio,

Another boulder is planted in front of the studio door and, once inside, one is immediately struck by the height of the room. It is 16 feet. A shiny, fire engine red stove made by Vermont Castings is sitting heavily in one corner. “I put it in the back of my Land Rover in 1985,” Mr. O’Neill mentions. The stove has moved, muse-like, from studio to studio.

Downstairs in the studio there’s an air-controlled archive of thousands and thousands of negatives, contact sheets and prints encompassing a 45-year career. It’s pristinely organized, like everything else here. “Counting the digital archives, there’s millions of images,” the photographer says.

Upstairs is a jumble of technical and expensive-looking equipment mixed with cardboard boxes that need to be moved for this story’s photos ... boxes that are extremely heavy a visiting writer trying to help out notices. What’s in them that makes them so heavy? Stones, rocks, of course.

See, rocks are Mr. O’Neill’s latest artistic fixation. Did I not mention that he also does fine art photography?

In 1991 the obsession was animal infants, resulting in a Villard book of images shot for platinum prints aptly named “Zoobabies.”

Then Mr. O’Neill got into yoga and started taking large-format pictures of yoga personalities. (In the main house I notice a giant shot of yogi guru Dharma Mittra, standing on his head, no hands, no tricks, on Manhattan’s Ninth Avenue and 13th Street. You try it.) Donna Karan’s Urban Zen store hung a selection from the series for a show a few seasons back in Sag Harbor, fyi.

So now the subject is rocks, thus the very heavy boxes on the floor of the studio that need to be moved if this story is ever going to be shot and finished.

The resulting images, “Stone Studies,” are giant, 53 by 60 inches, in a greenish pigment print I admire: extreme close-ups, set against soft jewel-toned backgrounds that pick up on tiny color flecks in the rocks.

Mesmerizing.

I ask what the process is for getting all this color out of the stones. Taking a cue from Ms. O’Neill’s artist friend, or maybe vice versa, who can know, Mr. O’Neill tells me, “I’m not sure I really want people to know how I achieve the backdrops, at least just yet.”

Looking back and forth from the dirty box of rocks on the floor and to the kaleidoscope-like complexity of these vividly-hued pictures hanging on the wall, I figure it’s magic.

No wonder he doesn’t want to tell.