The Rule Line

There is one wall in the building on Al Urubah Road that holds the afternoon for about forty minutes. We shot the whole of Foundation against it, twice, and used nothing else — no reflector, no second set-up, no second location.

The restriction was the point. When the light cannot be adjusted, the clothes have to do the work: the fall of a trouser, the way a lapel sits when the shoulder is unpadded, the difference between a cloth that creases and one that drapes. Everything in the frame is either the garment or the wall.

The campaign runs as eleven frames. They are meant to be read in order, the way a contact sheet is read, which is why the crops get tighter as they go — from the full look, to the jacket, to the seam.