Inside the Home of a Veteran Interiors Photographer

This article is from our first-ever print issue, available for order online now.

Maybe it’s my age, but I have a fondness for those with a kind of effortless, timeless elegance to their tastes. Unfussy. I think in our algorithm-driven times, it’s healthy to use these (often) experienced aesthetes as folks to recalibrate our sense of style. Yes, the eye needs to travel, but there are plenty out there who’ve done a ton of traveling, and they’re still around. To that point, I adore the work and world of French interiors photographer Roland Beaufre. We first met in regard to various stories he shot for Departures magazine when I was the Home & Design director there, and further connected in person in 2022 when his monograph Under the Sun: Around the World in 21 Houses launched at a super-chic cocktail event in Paris at L’Atelier Lardeur, cohosted by the feted wicker label Atelier Vime.

The book is like a postcard from another era of decoration— Rupert Thomas, the former editor of World of Interiors, wrote a foreword—and one that many of us in the business would like to get back to, from a sun-drenched villa belonging to Bernard-Henri Lévy in Tangier (where Beaufre has a unique connection) to other faraway homes in Thailand, Corsica, Mexico, and beyond. I reconnected with Beaufre when I started putting this first issue together and asked him to share a bit of his life in Perche, just a few hours outside of Paris. After he sent me a few snaps from his phone, I convinced him to shoot his own house and jump on a call to chat about it. We spoke a bit about photography, his lengthy relationship with Morocco, design’s evolution (devolution?), and that frustratingly gorgeous French lifestyle.

So when did you first move into this house?
I first moved here 24 years ago, and I did it because I wanted to leave Paris. I had enough of living there. I lived for maybe 40 years in Paris, something like this. And I wanted to change. Well, I didn’t think a lot about it, but I wanted to be in the country, to have the green and the quiet around me.

Where did you live in Paris, and why did you want to leave?
I was living in the 10th Arrondissement, Rue de Paradis. Well, it is a very Parisian neighborhood. I was very happy. I had a very nice apartment on the top of the building, and I had a view over all the roofs of Paris, with the Sacré-Coeur in front of me. But I don’t know, I think it was a bit over. I wanted to experiment with other things. When I was young, I moved a lot. My father, André Beaufre, was a general in the French army, and every two or three years we moved to another place. And for me, living in Paris for 40 years, even if I went to Tangier very often, I wanted to have something there as a part of my life.

And do you still go to Tangier a lot, or you’re staying more in France now?
No, for the moment I’m going four times a year to Tangier. Usually never less than two weeks. So it could be a month or something like that.

Back to France for a moment. What part of the country are you in?
I’m in Perche. It became famous in the last 10 years because many people from Paris came to have a country house in this neighborhood. The landscape is very, how could I say, something like the English countryside. Because it’s a place where there is no agriculture, but there are a lot of cows, horses, and a lot of animals all around. There are a lot of trees, a lot of little forests, and it’s very charming, really very charming. It’s like being in a painting of the 18th century in France. On the other hand, the people are very kind here. They are very warm and very kind, and all the people you meet in the shops or everywhere are smiling and they are nice people. And it’s very convenient because I can take the train and be in Paris in one hour. So it’s nothing. I can go to have lunch in Paris and return to my country home after.

And you’ve worked in photography and interiors of course for many years. When did you first start shooting?
I started shooting at the beginning of the 80s. But my first work wasn’t about decoration. I had an assignment to photograph the plane of the company Air Gabon. So I went to Gabon for two weeks, or something like that. And I traveled all around and I photographed people and planes and so on. I was at that time also working for agencies of models and actors and so on. And I started to think about doing something on Tangier, because I had known it for a very long time because my father had bought a house there. So I went to see Décoration magazine in Paris to propose they do a story on it. And nobody knew Tangier at that time, so they accepted immediately. And two weeks after, I was going to Tangier with a journalist to do my first story. And that was even before the 80s, it was in 1979.

What was your first interiors shoot for a magazine?
I remember very well. It was the house of the painter Claudio Bravo. He lived at that time in Tangier. It was Marie Claire Maison. And the journalist was Marie-Paule Pelle, and Marie-Paule Pelle after did the magazine called Décoration Internationale. So I had that chance because just after we had this trip to Tangier. So I started in a very trendy and famous magazine at that time. That was very good for my career.

After you shot that first house for a painter, what about it made you think to yourself that shooting interiors was your calling?
Well, I think I have always loved decoration. My mother was very fond of decoration, and the apartment in Paris where we lived at that time was very decorated. We spent all my childhood in the museums and visiting the palaces and so on. And people in Tangier at that time, people like David Herbert, who was a cousin of the royal family, and people like Yves Vidal, who was the manager of Knoll, and different people like that. I have always seen houses very decorated with a big style. And so I think I always had that taste. And at that time, my first publication became famous because people didn’t know Tangier. People were so curious about it. And after that, the other magazines called me to work for them. I didn’t want to refuse them!

Nice work if you can get it. And the house that you’re in now in the country, it definitely has history to it.
Well, it’s an old house from the 18th century for the monk of the church, which is on the bottom of the hill here. And it’s always had a farm. And one thing that I love so much is that my bathroom was the place for the pigs.

Say no more. When you moved in, did you have to do a lot of renovations?
Well, when I moved in, some work had been done in the house already, so it wasn’t too bad. But slowly, I did my own renovations, I changed different things. I broke down some walls and put in more windows, a better bathroom, and so on. Because you really need to understand what you need in the house first. I don’t like to renovate everything and then say afterward, “Oh, I should have done this or that.” So I always do things slowly. And, as you can see, I’m very fond of the color orange.

Why orange?
I don’t know. It came from my childhood. That’s the only thing I can say. All the carpets I have in my house, they are all the same. They’re orange and black. And it’s everywhere in the house, including the curtains.

Obviously there’s a lot of Moroccan and North African vibes. When you’re not in Tangier, what do you miss about being there? Aside from the warmth, the nice weather.
It’s more a question of atmosphere. I like to be in Tangier because there’s a special mood. You listen to Arab music and you have some scents, very special ones that you can’t get in Europe. And the colors are especially beautiful there. And in Tangier you have something special: Everywhere you go, you always see the sea. So it’s very special.

How’s your Arabic?
Not so good, but I can speak in an Arabic kitchen. And they’re always very happy when you say a few words, even if you are not going on in Arabic. But they understand you love the country, and so they’re very happy. But it’s a very difficult language. I tried to learn it, and it’s really very complicated. So I stopped.

And how would you characterize your photography career today? How often do you like to shoot? Are you attracted to certain types of projects?
Well, it’s not really planned. It depends, because sometimes I’m not working for two weeks, and sometimes I work for days and days in a row. What I like in that job is that I’m moving a lot. I see a lot of different people, which is always very interesting. And I think what I can say about my work is that I like to show in one photo what is the atmosphere of the place. For me the atmospheric part is really very important.

What is the secret to capturing that moment in a single piece of photography?
Well, at first there is the light, of course. The frame, and after that I think there are some little details you can put in the photo, like the flowers or to leave an item somewhere. So when you look at the photo you have the feeling that someone was just there. Like the person just left the frame. That’s what I always try to do.

Do you have a favorite camera?
Well, for a very long time, my favorite camera—and it’s still my favorite—has been Leica. I have worked with a Leica since the beginning of my career. And it’s also because I love the quality of the lens on top of it. When I had to move to digital, I tried to find a way to put the lens of the Leica on the Canon that I have. And I finally found it after a long search. So now it’s a mix between Leica and Canon. And I’m working in digital, like I was working with my Leica.

And obviously the industry of interiors and interior photography has changed a lot since the 80s, since you first started. What is the one thing you wish hadn’t changed?
Well, I think some things have changed a lot. People now are more nostalgic. And they are not so interested in all the new designs and all the new things you can find in decoration, or in furniture. In the 80s and even in the 90s, there were a lot of very interesting designs all around the world. And they really did something different than before. It was really something new that nobody had seen. And now I think it’s not so interesting. And it’s not so interesting because people are not interested in that. They don’t buy that type of very brand-new thing. It’s maybe a little strange, but who really brings something new to design now? I think we don’t have that anymore.

Agreed. Where do you spend your summers, in France?
Well, when I bought the house, I spent my summers in Tangier because my mother was still alive, and we still had the house there. It was a big house, something like 5,400 square feet. So I went with my friends and sometimes there were six people in the house, plus my mother, and so on. We would go to the beach and dine on the terrace. So it went for something like 10 years while I lived there. And maybe something like seven years ago, we sold the house. My mother died, and my sister stopped going to Tangier, so we couldn’t keep that big house for just myself. So we sold it.

And after that, it was very different to spend the summer in Tangier. Today the city is really very big. There are 2 million people in Tangier now, and when I was young there were only 200,000 people or something. So it’s a big difference. And there are too many people in the summer, and it’s really unbearable. So I haven’t gone now for seven years to Tangier in the summers. I prefer to go in winter because the weather is perfect.

When it comes to summers in France, what is your ideal Sunday like?
Oh, in the summer it’s to be in the garden. And there’s a pool. I love to take a swim and read something quietly on my terrace in the shade. And, well, that’s it.

Do you entertain?
I have some friends living not too far from here. And I have friends from Paris coming to see me. It’s a lot of people coming and going.

So on a Sunday, if people from Paris come to visit you and you entertain at home, what do you serve?
Well, I have different dishes. So one of my favorites is roast chicken with potatoes like your grandmother made them, with garlic, and cooked for a very long time. After that, I usually make a tagine of chicken with olives and potatoes. Or a quiche lorraine. It depends on my mood.