White and white

On holidays I take the most mundane of holiday pictures: buildings that I see. I enjoyed walking through the Serralves Museum and peeking at the building from inside. I thought that the architect must love people who do this, because he can control your vision almost completely. The street view is not neat and controllable. Other buildings come in the way. There might be a street light, or a traffic signal which spoils an otherwise fantastic view. Not so with the window on to itself.

So this photo was dictated by what Alvaro Siza Vieira wanted me to see. I could, of course, have the usual variables at my command: the season of the year, the time of the day, the focal length of my camera, the field of view, the post-processing. I looked at the final photo and then googled for images of the museum. Interestingly, the angle I had chosen was not visible to the spider god. So that’s my first lesson in architectural photography: the architect cannot influence where you choose to look. The photographer and architect are partners in such images.