We can be proud of our friends. 

I recently visited Raquel, one of my best friends with whom I studied in high school. We both studied Arts back in our hometown in Porto, then Raquel moved to London and I moved to Berlin. Living in another country  hasn’t changed our friendship, though we realised recently that we haven’t spent a weekend together since three years, so I flew over to meet her.

Raquel is one of my most talented friends, with an incredible understanding for visual culture in anything she does. She has a natural passion for photography, asiatic cinema, mid-century furniture, illustration and music. She plays the harp since the age of seven. Somehow, it’s thrilling to see how she brings her references from multidisciplinary practices into her life and work, inspiring everyone around her as well.

When I visited Raquel in East London, she welcomed me with smiling eyes excited to show me all about her new home - we had plenty of time. Throughout told stories since the past years about our lives in different countries, I got caught by Raquel’s surprisingly good cooking skills, followed by a proper tour through every piece of furniture carefully chosen to decorate her place in its midcentury modern look. Sitting together in Raquel’s living room drinking Port wine, I was given a detailed insight about her passionate research in the iconic furniture of the 1950’s, the designers she most admires and how she found her taste for combining shapes and patterns while filling her house with unique pieces of design.

Following her enthusiasm, I grabbed some expired films from the fridge and charged the old medium-format camera that Raquel once bought while she was still studying. She helped me fix the film in, carefully telling me how it works and I made myself a tour throughout this time spent together, capturing a certain meaning of this home feeling and how much it can tell about one person…