The Photo Gallery

…films, audio stories, photographs, maps, timelines and family trees within a curated narrative structure.

Piet — the first letter, 2026

The Photo Gallery descends from the “slideshow room” in Piet’s founding list. Even in the prototype, every slide had a title: the photograph was treated as a named object with a caption and a credit, never a cell in a chronological grid. That instinct still governs the room — photos belong to stories, stories to rooms, and nothing here scrolls like a camera roll.

To be confirmed with Piet (Friday read-back): the photo room’s founding intent is the thinnest on record — the prototype was a technical slideshow — so this room benefits most from his own words.

How it’s built

The room is GalleryView with three browse modes, a lightbox that carries the content types, and the museum-mode wall-plaque. The full content-type catalogue — single photos, photos with stories, photo sets with video or audio — lives on Room Types & Content with screenshots; this page doesn’t repeat it.

• Three views, one collection — list (the default; titles, dates, credits), grid (images only, for scanning), and the parallax gallery view (full-screen, free-scroll, museum-scaled). The view toggle is the room’s one control.

The Living Room, grid view — audio, story, and film badges on the tiles. Staging capture · The Ashworth Collection · 2026-07-03.

• The lightbox — every photo and set opens in it: split layout when a story rides along, chapter-synced Vimeo when a film does, a waveform player and transcript when a voice does. Keyboard, focus-trap, and reduced-motion behaviour are shared platform contracts.

“The Kitchen Table” — a photo set with audio narration: waveform, chapters, and the transcript behind one tap. Staging capture · The Ashworth Collection · 2026-07-03.

• The wall-plaque — at museum scale each exhibited photo gets its serif title, whispered-caps metadata, and the human-written curator note (never auto-generated; absent means absent).
• Visitor submissions — the room accepts uploads from family visitors; submissions land in moderation (pending) and the curator’s decision controls what ever reaches the wall. Approval triggers a thank-you mail to the submitter via the sync pipeline.

The primary device is an iPad on a side table — the room at tablet width, with the Share Your Story block that feeds moderation. Staging capture · The Ashworth Collection · 2026-07-03.

Setting it up

How a Photo Gallery reaches a family’s museum. The shared chain is documented once on Room Types & Content; these are the photo-specific steps.

1. Declare the content source. In the family’s config base, add a Collections row: name, slug, Collection Type: photo-gallery, the content base’s ID in Base ID, Status: active.

2. Declare the room — once, in the config base. Add a Rooms row (name, slug, Type: photo-gallery, the Collection link to the row above, and a Status). One room binds one base, so every photo in that base belongs to this room; there is nothing to declare on the content side.

3. Fill Photos and Photo Sets in the content base. Photos optionally link to sets; sets order their photos and may carry a video or audio story. A photo shows in one set only: if it is linked to two sets, it appears in the first one and the second set goes without it. To show a photo on its own instead, give it its own Curation row.

4. Sync. Scheduled drain or Sync now. Photo originals are copied to durable Blob storage and stamped back (Blob Image URL); audio stories are transcribed and their files moved to Blob as part of the same run.

5. Verify. On staging as an anonymous visitor: all three views render, a photo opens in the lightbox with its metadata, a set plays its media, and pending/rejected submissions are absent.

Caution

Ignore any Rooms table you find in the content base. A photo room used to be declared twice — once in the config base, once again here — and that second declaration is retired since July 2026. The leftover table survives in some bases until it is deleted; it is read by nothing. The same goes for a Room column on Photos, Photo Sets, or Curation. Rooms are declared in the config base only.

Fields the room reads

Caution

Airtable structure is WIP (as of 2026-07-03). The curation surface is changing under ADR-004; these fields are current today but will drift. Base screenshots are deliberately deferred until the structure settles — the field tables here are the reference.

Photos table (content base) — the richest table on the platform:

Field	Type	Required	Consumed by
Image	attachment	yes	the photograph (live path; the served path uses the Blob copy)
Blob Image URL	url	stamped by sync	the served image — never hand-edit
Caption	long text	recommended	title + story (rich text beyond ~100 chars becomes the split layout)
Photographer	text	recommended	the credit on plaque + lightbox
Moderation Status	select	yes	only approved serves; submissions arrive pending
Source	select	yes for uploads	visitor-submission drives the approval-mail flow
Submitted By / Submitted Email	text	uploads only	credit + the thank-you mail
Approval Notified	checkbox	sync-managed	prevents duplicate approval mails
People	link → People	optional	speaker/subject facts, cross-room entities

Photo Sets: title, ordered Photos links, status, and optionally a video story (Vimeo + chapter sync) or audio story. Audio Stories: Audio File (MP3 preferred), narrator, Transcript (curator-written wins over auto-transcription), plus sync-managed fields (Transcription Status, Blob Audio URL, Blob Transcript URL, Processing Log) — never hand-edit the managed ones.

Tip

Audio format. MP3 at 128 kbps is the sweet spot for voice narration; WAV works but is needlessly heavy. See the format table.