Our seventh Parallel Conversation. Frank van Bennekom is an architect who photographs. INVADOS, his first book after PRIVADOS magazine, is a search for experimental houses under the sun, shot on film over several years. We spoke about longing, access, and what a quiet room shows you.
Tell me where INVADOS started.
INVADOS started with a feeling of longing.
I found myself drawn to beautiful places under the sun - experimental houses by the sea, hidden modernist villas surrounded by nature, and private homes that felt timeless and unconventional. It was about the feeling those places gave me: goosebumps, freedom, beauty, silence and a different rhythm of life.
That longing eventually led me towards architects such as Henri Quillé, Josep Lluís Sert, Erwin Broner and Oscar Niemeyer. What connected them wasn't a particular style, but a willingness to experiment with landscape, light, climate and the way people live.
The book was never about documenting forgotten houses. It became a search for experimental architecture that carries emotion and timelessness. The female form was always part of that world. She brings sensitivity, intimacy and scale to these forgotten houses, allowing the architecture to feel human again. For me, architecture and the female form speak the same language: proportion, movement, softness and strength. I wanted INVADOS to feel cinematic rather than documentary, where architecture, light, the sea and the human presence exist in conversation with one another.
Photography taught me how to truly see architecture.
PRIVADOS was a magazine, INVADOS is a book. What changed in the making?
PRIVADOS was instinctive. INVADOS was intentional.
The magazine was about putting my vision into the world. The book was about building a world around that vision.
It took years of travelling, researching, returning to places, asking permission, getting rejected and trying again.
Looking back, I honour my own development.
PRIVADOS was where I found my voice. INVADOS was where I finally trusted it.
Are the houses in the book places you had access to, or places you talked your way into?
Both.
Some visits were carefully arranged months in advance. Others happened because I knocked on a door, started a conversation or simply got lucky.
Of course, not every gate opened.
I got kicked out of a Barragán house while photographing with a model in Mexico. I was chased by a police officer in Los Angeles after trying to photograph a Case Study House. And there are plenty of places where dogs or security guards made sure I never got inside.
Looking back, I think those experiences became part of the story. They reminded me that the search is often just as meaningful as the place itself.
You came to photography through architecture. What made you first pick up a camera?
After graduating as an architect, I worked for several architectural offices, but somewhere along the way I felt uninspired. I was designing for commercial clients, which made me feel creatively disconnected from the reasons I had fallen in love with architecture in the first place.
While travelling, I instinctively started photographing the summer places that attracted me, sun-drenched beaches, quiet landscapes, forgotten houses and spaces with a certain atmosphere. I wasn't thinking about becoming a photographer. I simply wanted to hold on to those moments.
Photography became a way of paying attention again. In many ways, it brought me back to myself.
You design places for people to live in, and you photograph them almost empty. Is that deliberate?
Very much so.
I'm interested in architecture that creates a feeling rather than making a statement.
I see architecture as sculpture. Something less to decorate and more to experience.
To me, luxury has very little to do with size or excess. It's about light, silence, nature and feeling completely at ease in a space.
I'm interested in creating homes that become an extension of the people who live in them, original places that feel calm, timeless and connected to their surroundings.
You've only ever shot film. Was that a decision, or just how you started?
Nostalgia has always been an important part of my work. I'm drawn to it, that's also why I started shooting film. Unlike digital, with film the decision happens in the moment.
I love the discipline of that. One frame, one chance, and then the waiting. It forces me to trust my instincts instead of a screen.
The imperfections - expired film, damaged negatives or even a blank roll - are part of the emotional process. They remind me that photography is always a collaboration between intention and chance.
The houses in INVADOS belong to a mid-century world, and film naturally carries that atmosphere. It gives the images a softness, a warmth and a sense of timeless memory that digital photography simply does not give me.
More than anything, film slows me down. It makes me present. And I think that's something we've quietly lost in a world where everything happens instantly.
And the camera you keep going back to?
People often ask photographers which camera they use. Honestly, I think it's one of the least interesting questions in photography. A photograph is shaped far more by the person behind the camera than by the camera itself, which is simply a tool for translating your vision. It's about how you see light, space and atmosphere.
I still shoot most of my work with a Minolta X-700 and a 75–300mm lens. I love the freedom that lens gives me. I can move between intimacy and distance without changing the way I work. The camera is fully manual, which keeps me involved in every decision.
Years ago, I owned a Contax G2, one of the cameras everyone wants. Eventually, I sold it to a well-known photographer, who later used it to photograph internationally known artists. Ironically, I never connected with that camera. It did too much for me.
LOST AWAY was about wanting to disappear for a while. Is that still what you're after?
No.
That was my first photography series, and it came from a period when I felt disconnected from myself. I wanted to disappear because I didn't yet know where I belonged.
Looking back, that journey brought me closer to the things that had always been there: architecture, photography, silence, nature and a particular way of looking at the world.
Today I feel grounded, so I'm no longer interested in escaping.
I'm interested in creating places where people can slow down, breathe and reconnect, with themselves and with the world around them.
Is there a place you've never shot that you want to?
There are still a lot of houses I'd love to experience in person. Casa Gomis by Antonio Bonet has been on my list for years, as well as Alberto Ponis' houses in Sardinia. I'd also love to return to Mexico and finally visit Casa Amalia Hernández by Agustín Hernández Navarro. I never made it inside.
What are you circling next?
I want to keep creating projects under the sun anywhere around the world.
I'm drawn to clients who see architecture as a way of living rather than a status symbol. Together, I want to create homes that are deeply connected to their surroundings, to natural light and to the lives unfolding inside them.
At the same time, I want to continue building a body of photographic work that explores architecture, landscape, light, nature and that timeless feeling of endless summers, freedom and beauty.
Photography and architecture are two different passions driven by the same curiosity. Photography allows me to observe the world. Architecture allows me to contribute to it. I hope to spend the rest of my life doing both.
vanbennekom.co / @van_bennekom
INVADOS is available at Parallel Editions.