Art direction for a series of images exploring texture, protein, and the domestic kitchen — shot over three days in an apartment in Barcelona.
The tortilha española is not a difficult dish. It requires three ingredients and patience. What interested Matheus was not the recipe but the object: its weight, its colour when cut, the way it holds heat longer than it should. He wanted to photograph it the way you might photograph a stone.
The series was commissioned by a Barcelona-based culinary magazine for their annual ingredient-focused issue. Matheus served as food stylist and creative director. The photographer was briefed to treat the subject with the same rigour as architectural photography — fixed tripod, available light, no reflectors.
Sixteen frames. The final edit used seven. The images ran across a six-page spread with no headline and no recipe — just the photographs and a single line of type: Cuatro huevos. Dos patatas. Una hora.