About

We both love to open doors. Those of museums and monuments, of course, but most of all the ones we walk past without noticing, and behind which something is being made.

When you start opening them, you discover a Portugal no one talks about. A country that produces, transforms, invents. Family workshops, century-old factories, lone artisans and large teams. A living country, in the present, that no guidebook will show you.

Portugal lends itself to this particularly well. There's a wealth of know-how here that goes unsuspected — from textiles to cork, from glass to canned fish, from furniture to fashion. And there's, above all, a Portuguese way of welcoming: open, generous, without fuss. You step in somewhere, and you're welcomed.

What we felt each time, we wanted to share. We decided to make it an editorial project. Each place is met, chosen, told. The traveller is welcomed by those who make.

Joana is Portuguese, born in the Alentejo. Trained in tourism, photographer. She brings to the project the country's rootedness, the professional eye on hospitality, and the gaze that knows how to frame a workshop like a portrait.

Marie is French, settled in Portugal. She has previously led several projects around the discovery of cities and territories. She brings the editorial strategy and the curiosity of an outsider — that of someone who takes nothing for granted.

The project was born between us, from a friendship and a shared conviction: that there's an entire Portugal to introduce, and that no one is really doing it.

Marie & Joana