THE FOUNDATIONS · PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography tells the Houses apart

With a shared palette, typography and framing, it is photography that makes each House unmistakable. So each House has a subject of its own, and the subject is a shooting rule, not a suggestion.

Why one frame per block: decision 6 on the path →

One frame per block

Each block type has a fixed frame, the same across the four websites: the opening image is horizontal everywhere, the detail vertical everywhere. The photograph is chosen to fit the frame, never the other way round. Every block measures exactly the same across the four.

The two formats come from your own archive: the great majority of the photographs supplied already carry this proportion, and cropping to it costs little. More radical formats would cost every interior its ceiling and floor.

Each House's subject

Valverde Lisboa

Thresholds

Doorways, windows, the edge between garden and street. The city is glimpsed, never surveyed. Privacy is the subject.

The subject holding from image to image.

An open window onto the balcony balustrade, plane trees beyond.

The garden pool seen from inside, leaves crossing the view.

The house's façade glimpsed from a car window across the avenue.

Valverde Seteais

Architecture on axis

Symmetrical, centred, shot down the building's line. The palace is beheld. Ceremony is the subject.

The subject holding from image to image.

French doors open on the palace's axis, the garden and the plain beyond.

The frescoed salon down its centre line, chandelier over the console.

The same salon from the far end, the doors holding the axis.

Valverde Santar

Hands and horizon

Work being done, and land continuing past the frame. The seasons are the subject.

The subject holding from image to image.

The potter at the wheel in the village workshop, a jug taking shape.

Vine rows against the evening sun, the land carrying on past the frame.

The house above its gardens at dusk, swifts over the roof.

Valverde Collection

Objects, no people

Details drawn from the three Houses. The Collection has no photography of its own, and that is the right answer: a collection's imagery is its properties.

The subject holding from image to image.

Books, reading glasses and a camera at a Lisboa bedside.

The gilded piano at Seteais, its strings open.

A cake under its glass dome among Santar's teapots.

Next: Voice →