MONUMENTS ÉGYPTIENS (2024)
28 Pages
Full Colour Indigo Print
Saddle Stitched
Foil stamped cover
21cm x 27cm
Edition of 50
€40
The images in this publication are taken from a damaged copy of Recueil de Monuments Égyptiens by Jean Capart, published in 1902, a portfolio of prints featuring Egyptian antiquities each protected by a thin sheet of tissue paper, a common practice in expensively illustrated publications of the 19th and early 20th centuries. I’ve always been attracted to these sheets, the way they distance us from the image beneath, yet also bring us closer by revealing subtle shadows of its form, requiring of the reader a delicate touch to reveal it. Until I saw Capart’s original, with its tattered, grubby sheets of tissue and the ancient monuments beneath that have inspired so much imperialistic hubris, I had never realised how photographic these gestures actually are. To simultaneously show and conceal the world, to drive us ever further away from the object of our desire is photography’s greatest trick and a mischief I have always admired.