Swimming Pools by Rafael Prieto

On The Western (Left): “I was thinking of Joan Didion’s essays on swimming pools, and what they come to represent in California— particularly Los Angeles. These pools sit at the center of long seasons of sun. They are visible, sometimes performative. They suggest leisure more than they deliver it. Still, they pull light into the house, illuminate gardens, and quietly bind a home to its neighborhood.”

On The Uncanny (Right): “While working on this pool, I kept returning to The Swimmer—not the story itself, but the feeling it leaves behind. What stayed with me was the beauty of decadence: pools that survive as evidence that opulence once existed. I imagine a house built with confidence, now too demanding to maintain, yet unwilling to let this pool go. It remains, slightly defiant, holding the memory of pleasure—of beautiful times that no longer require explanation.”

On The Fitz (Left): “This is a pool that is lived with. It calls to mind The Great Gatsby: a private ritual, the owner swimming each night. It stands for something achieved rather than inherited. It is cared for, respected, and consistently returned to. Its authority comes from attention and repetition, from the act of looking and reflecting. Its sensuality is not indulgent, but earned.”

On The Olympic (Right): “The Olympic pool, to me, is an exercise in democracy. It is the same pool, everywhere in the world, governed by shared rules. Materials remain consistent; dimensions shift slightly. It allows for everything: rest, discipline, challenge, forgetting, remembering. It endures because it follows a structure. Its permanence is in its order.”