The first thing photographer Amanda Weil asks “pretty much anyone” who walks into her Village apartment is to stand, in profile, before a translucent-glass door so she can take a picture. Turned into silhouettes, they are displayed on a wall in a grid. “My life is so much about creating community,” she says. “And whether it’s the UPS guy or whatever, these are your people!”
Weil’s photographs mingle on the walls with art made by her friends. Some of her photos, like the seascape shower door, have been transformed into architectural features by Weil Studio, founded in 1993, through which she collaborates with architects and designers to produce installations based on her work. Transparency and translucency have long fascinated her, and an early inspiration was stained glass: “Light is the embodiment of the spirit,” she says, “and that just really spoke to me.”
She found the apartment by “kismet,” visiting it on a playdate with her daughter, Samantha. Its parent owners were thinking about selling, and she needed more space. That was 18 years ago. But it wasn’t until the pandemic that she decided to renovate it. Her first move was to hire an architect whose name she says she has forgotten, probably because “if he didn’t like an idea I had, he wouldn’t draw it, so I fired him.”
Liberated, Weil felt she could do it herself, albeit with some help from her contractor (from Worldkor Construction Corporation) and guidance from one of her best friends, the architect and production designer Kevin Thompson. It was a learn-as-she-went process. “The funny part is that there wasn’t an overarching idea,” beyond letting in more light. “It was like problem solving, one thing after the other,” she says. “I did so much of this with blue tape,” she adds gleefully, mapping out where the walls would go on the floor. She had a particular idea for her bedroom, though. “I am very into boats, so I had this vision in my head of a ship captain’s bed and then literally went on Amazon and bought a porthole and told the contractor where to put it.”
When it came to the kitchen, she knew the five-foot wall blocking the window had to go “because it’s all about the view.” She visited other people’s kitchens to see what she liked. “I hid the appliances as much as I could,” she says. “It was worth it for me showing up here every day for three months because I thought deeply about how I live, all those teeny details, like how you live differently from everybody else. I rarely yearned to come home, and now I do.”
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