PARIS LIVING ROOMS
AUTHOR: DOMINIQUE NABOKOV
INTRODUCTION: ANDRÉE PUTMAN
PUBLICATION DATE: OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2002
U.S. LIST PRICE: $29.95
HARDCOVER
81/4 x 91/2
114 PAGES; 100 FULL-COLOR IMAGES
Photographer Dominique Nabokov has documented the living rooms of well-known Parisians—artists, writers, designers, intellectuals, and the occasional celebrity. The rooms vary widely from one another in terms of formality and decor, but they are all equalized under the gaze of Nabokov’s camera. Each room is shot simply as it happened to appear on that particular day, without any people. Using discontinued Polaroid Colorgraph type 691 film, which provides a full-color transparency in four minutes, Nabokov does not use special lighting, or allow the rooms to be rearranged or touched by a stylist. The result is a series of fascinatingly deadpan photos that puts an ironic slant on the celebrity interior genre. These peeks into the living rooms of celebrated Parisians will provide hours of voyeuristic pleasure. Renowned product and interior designer Andrée Putman says in her introduction: "Interior decorating magazines always show interiors after a full-blown beauty treatment. Often, the spontaneity of those who live there is lost to an art director’s exercise in style. Here, the opposite happens: there is no hint of a flower delivery about to arrive. These living room photographs are unaffected snapshots, portraits without the gloss. Like a thief, the photographer enters to capture the essential intimacy of a room left unguarded. These are straightforward photos, permeated by a flavor of the illicit. The aggressive approach is akin to a trespass, to a burglary. Yet each image has been agreed to beforehand, with the owners of the premises taking only a slight risk – that of not recognizing themselves. No need to feel nervous or worried – Dominique Nabokov has demonstrated a subtle conceptual approach that is softened by her deliberate technical nonchalance."

Dominique Nabokov started as an assistant to the photographer Patrick Demarchelier in 1980. She is the author/photographer of New York Living Rooms, and has contributed to numerous other books. Her photographs have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, ArtForum, Vogue, Interview, and The New York Review of Books. Her work has been widely exhibited in France, Germany, and the United States.

Andrée Putman is one of the world’s leading interior designers. Working on space and light with special attention paid to the naturalness and elegance of details, she creates with her team of architects and designers timeless, simple, familiar and thoroughly contemporary spaces.