“Les Living Rooms, New York, Paris, Berlin” de Dominique Nabokov, curation par Lucas Djaou

As part of Design Parade Toulon 2023 and curated by Lucas Djaou, the photographer Dominique Nabokov presents, besides a selection of photographs from her famous Living Rooms series, a focus on two apartments, that of Vincent Darré in Paris and that of Fernando Sanchez in New York, two friends of her friends.

Bourgeois or casual, minimalist or busy, messy or perfectly tidy, often majestic, rarely cramped, there is a great silence reigning in these Living Rooms. Their inhabitants are absent. With her instant camera at her fingertips, Dominique Nabokov discreetly enters these houses. She chooses a viewpoint, takes a picture, turns round, photographs as it is, nothing added, nothing modified, without artifice, and then she leaves. Nothing is deliberate. She does not photograph interiors for interior design magazines. In fact, sometimes she doesn’t even know the places before going there. About these places, she knows who lives there, friends or acquaintances, and takes an interest in them for who they are.
Living Rooms is both a place of remembrance and a space where daily life takes place. Both intimate and a reception room. It is a sanctuary. It reflects those who live there: that of Bob Wilson reveals a fetish for chairs and that of Yves Saint Laurent shows a fabulous art collection… Dominique Nabokov therefore paints a portrait of the occupants of these places in the manner of Perec in his novel Things: A Story of the Sixties [Les Choses].

This adventure started in the mid-1990s, when Tina Brown invited the photographer to produce a photo essay for The New Yorker. On October 16, 1995, the weekly magazine published 18 Polaroids of interiors in which Dominique portrayed New York’s cultural elite through their Living Room. She would continue this series for more than twenty years in the cities where she lived the most, in Paris then Berlin.
Living Rooms series.

Paris Living Rooms: Yvon Lambert and Yves Saint Laurent.
Berlin Living Rooms: Angelica Blechschmidt and Douglas Gordon.
New York Living Rooms: Louise Bourgeois, Robert (Bob) Wilson and Julian Schnabel. Focus on two apartments.
Paris apartment: Vincent Darré.
New York apartment: Fernando Sanchez.