Inside Acapella By X: Boston Interior Photography with Ivory and Bone

A look inside the design details of Acapella By X, shot by Boston interior photographer Joe St. Pierre in collaboration with designer Ivory and Bone.

Some spaces photograph themselves. Acapella By X is one of them — but only if you know where to stand.

I was brought in to document the interior work of Boston-based designer Ivory and Bone, and what they built here is the kind of layered, material-rich environment that makes interior photography genuinely interesting. Not a single obvious angle in the room. Every detail asks you to slow down.

The Bar

The bar is the anchor of the space. Gold zellige tile lines the arched back wall, catching the pendant light in a way that shifts depending on your position in the room. I shot this from just outside the arch — framing within a frame — to let the depth of the shelving read without flattening the foreground. The velvet barstools, the olive tree bleeding in from the left, the single cocktail sitting on the marble bar top. Nothing was moved. That’s how it was.

Good interior photography doesn’t rearrange a room. It finds the composition that was already there.

The Bathroom

This is the shot most photographers would skip. A bathroom feels like a detail, not a destination. But Ivory and Bone put serious intention into this space — fluted green marble tile, unlacquered brass wall-mount fixtures, hand-painted tropical wallpaper that wraps every surface, including what’s reflected back in the mirrors. The eryngium in the ceramic vessel was already on the counter. I kept it.

The challenge here is that mirrors double everything. You’re managing your own reflection, the room’s reflection, and the relationship between what’s real and what’s reversed — all at once. Getting the two mirrors to read as windows into the space rather than distractions took patience and a precise camera position.

The Dining Room

The wide shot is where interior photography earns its keep. This is the image a designer puts in their portfolio, a restaurant uses on their website, a brand references when they’re pitching the next project. It has to do a lot of work.

Acapella By X has a long, narrow footprint with exposed brick on one side, Gothic-arched columns anchoring the center, and the bar visible in the background. The tonal range is significant — warm amber booths on the left, cooler stone on the right, a chandelier pulling your eye to the back wall. I exposed for the ambient and let the shadows hold. No strobes. The image needed to feel like being in the room, not like a real estate listing.

That’s the distinction I care about in this kind of work: documentation versus atmosphere. Any camera can document. The goal is atmosphere.

Working with Ivory and Bone

Designers at Ivory and Bone’s level think in materials and mood — the photography has to match that language. My job on a project like this isn’t to impose a look, it’s to understand what the designer built and find the frames that communicate it accurately. Color relationships, texture, scale, and light behavior. The camera has to be fluent in all of it.

If you’re a designer, creative director, or hospitality group looking for a Boston interior photographer who works at this level, I would love to connect! - Joestpierrephoto.com