Rooms at Rest.
Bedrooms, baths and living rooms photographed in the week before their owners moved in, when everything is placed and nothing has been used.
- Year
- 2026
- Place
- Lisbon
- Photographs
- 12 of 24 shown
- Format
- Large format film, pigment prints
Statement
For two years I asked the architects and builders I work with to call me in the last week of a project: the beds made, the towels folded, nobody living there yet. Twenty-four of them called back.
A finished room that no one has used is a strange thing. It is complete and still waiting. The light has the whole place to itself, and it lands on linen, stone and timber exactly as the architect hoped it would.
Each room was photographed once, at the hour its main window received the most light, on a 4×5 camera set at the height of a standing eye.
Mara Ilves
Sequence
12 photographs, in the order they hang.
Select any photograph to view it full screen. Use the arrow keys to move through the sequence.
Editions
From this series, for your wall.
Low Water
2025 · Algarve coast · 18 photographs