“With this book, I wanted to tell a story. The story of these incredible homes, their uniqueness, and their identity. Much like how a film brings to light, in certain angles, the soul of a place,” says Salvaing. “For example, with Villa Planchard, it seemed essential to me to showcase the strong personality of this residence, which was conceived and designed by Gio Ponti for a couple of art collectors. The place is a bit like a movie character, whose personality was forged from its history, its volumes, the light that crosses it…it was a soul and life I wanted to capture.”
The comparison to cinema is an apt one. One of the properties featured is just that—a set for Wong Kar-Wai’s period film 2046, for which the exacting Hong Kong director crafted a series of sumptuous ‘60s-inspired interiors. The aforementioned Portaluppi property, meanwhile, was famously the setting of Luca Guadagnino’s 2009 romance I Am Love. Then, there’s Dorothy Draper’s dazzling design for the Palácio Quitandinha in Rio, which looks every bit the ‘40s film set per her signature Hollywood Regency anti-minimalist approach. And the rest of the homes are cinematic simply in their essence—featuring rooms that have a story and a point of view.
Salvaing’s career has taken him around the world, camera in tow, to capture homes for Vogue, Architectural Digest, Condé Nast Traveler, World of Interiors, and more. It’s a voyeuristic journey across the interiors of today’s most discerning individuals, and their private spaces not otherwise seen—a practice popularized by Slim Aarons and Horst P. Horst. The latter was first sent to photograph homes by the legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland; to prompt his first interiors assignment, she mentioned his fashion photographs had become “too fashionable,” and it “might do him good.”
Her instincts were in the right place: Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Horst would give the world the ability to venture into homes out of their reach, long before the internet and Instagram. Decades later, when vacationing is almost an impossibility, Interior Voyages allows the eye to travel while the feet remain safely planted where you are—meaning a flip through the book’s lavishly illustrated pages may well be the most exotic trip you can take right now, wherever you might be.
Interior Voyages is available for pre-order now.
