L’inédit des choses (The Unthought of Things)

The Beauty of Dominique Mauri’s still lifes is not in the eyes of the beholder, it is inherent to the image itself. It is a quality owed to the stillness that traverses his work. Stillness is the beauty, the unthought of things or l’inédit des choses.

Relating Stillness: A Sense of Serenity

Our encounter with the genre of still life is frequent. Outside of fine art museums, advertisements use  still life to capture our attention, and as a commercial photographer, Mauri shot many such images. Take food photography, in its simplest form, it consists of a still life where the objects on display are separated from a  human presence. In the end, there might be only grapes, plates and cups, just there, standing still. The image captures their immobility. The connection we feel comes not because we can identify the objects but because of stillness. This genre flourished in the seventeenth century Netherlands from where the term stilleven comes. Painting shifted from showcasing wars and religion to depicting things accommodated for the pace of an intimate and private home. As with the still lifes of the master painters like Dutch Adriaen Coorte, or the nature morte of the French Jean Siméon Chardin, Dominique Mauri also turns stillness into an effect that the image produces. That is why looking at his work, one feels a sense of silence, repose and serenity. Like these masters, he makes us contemplate the image in its stillness. Perhaps like the contradiction at the heart of the French term nature morte, where life and death exist simultaneously, Mauri’s practice emphasises the life of an object standing still.

A still life requires a certain way of looking, a looking that is affected by stillness. This means a perception that is directed at the appreciation of the objects in the image. A certain distance comes to exist between the viewer and the objects. Rather than veiling them with our habits, judgments and symbols, a perception imbued with stillness does not race to impose its prejudices. Instead, it seeks the objects’ unheard and novel voice, or l’inédit des choses. Mauri introduces a patient but also emphatic sense of looking. “I refuse the conceptual” he once said.[1] He constructs perception, how we look at things so that objects remain undisturbed by our conceptions. The exercise of looking at an image with lemons and a jug is actually an exercise in standing still. This respectful distance rescues the still life from tautology, to see them as yet another lemons and a jug. It opens room for a new way of looking at the reality of those objects. That is perhaps what Mauri carries from his commercial photography, to bring out the hidden or unheard illusions of an object, so long as we stand still and just look.

Relating The Object: A Technique of Loyalty

Whereas distance augments  the stillness of things, Mauri takes a different position vis-à-vis the objects in his work. As the artist, he guards them with thoughtfulness and dedication which he translates into technique. “The still life is loyal to me” notes Mauri when asked about the choice of genre.[2] In return, he is also loyal to it. That loyalty demarcates his relationship with the objects he chooses for his photographs. His gaze is not the curious photographer’s, instead, he hides behind the object. Perhaps another remnant from his past practice as a commercial photographer is about seeking the object. He acquires new habits of working with each one. Towards the end of his life, the nineteenth century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche remarked that our role was “to be good neighbours of the nearest things.”[3] Mauri finds a way, through his technique, to be that good neighbour. He determines his position through calculations of the depth of field, choice of lens calibrated to the size of the film itself. A studious eye and a meticulous play of physics. L’inédit of his still life photography is his friendship and dedication translated as technique.

This loyalty is also an aesthetics of care  and creating these images is one way of showing this. If as a commercial photographer he sought illusion, Mauri as an artist seeks beauty and perfection. He turns stillness and tranquility into aesthetic principles. Calibrating empty photographic space is an important aspect for manifesting tranquility. Like Chardin’s paintings, backgrounds in Mauri’s photographs are often empty in order to allow for a better discernment of the objects. As if eliminating any background noise, this visually translates stillness. Technique and aesthetics share a symbiotic relationship. To further work an image through stillness and temporality, Mauri made several platinum prints of vases with flowers. The images from this printing technique are vivid. As contact prints, the details from the negative are not lost. This technique was revived by twentieth century American photographer Irving Penn who also used it for his still lifes. These platinum prints survive well as compared to other photographs printed through other techniques. Their physical permanence becomes stillness embodied.

Relating Life: A Balance of Power

Stillness works itself in many ways in Dominique Mauri’s photography. As an aesthetic effect, it directs our contemplation of the image. And to produce it, he develops his technique as an act of listening to the objects. There remains a further relevance to stillness, it is the result of the balance of power between his chosen objects. Even though unrelated, they coexist in the frame. Mauri chooses objects that have character to them like his still life of the jeweller’s tools. Not only are the latter unconventional objects, but the rust adds to their uniqueness. With the silver objects, he waits for them to become oxidised before including them in his still lifes. In that transformation, their unexpectedness is revealed. Here again, it is l’inédit des choses that we encounter. In seeking out the object for his photograph, Mauri is keen to direct us towards their unheard characters.

In fact, there is a sense in which it is the object that gives direction to the image, it speaks of its nature through photography. Perhaps that is why Mauri’s images are full of life, because his objects are animated by their uniqueness. At times, he will pair a main object with a supporting one which he calls a non-object, one that we cannot qualify, in order to re-centre the frame around the main one. In Plaster Foot (Nature morte #78, Pied - dés, 2022), a clamp holds the background behind two charismatic objects, a plaster foot and a glass pyramid.  It becomes the third character and calls attention to the theatrics of the balance of power. It is as if the still life turns into a theatre where the objects are actors in search of their roles.

As heroes of their own story, the objects do not provide answers to our questions. They stop being symbols for the audience. These still life photographs cannot be confused with the traditional vanitas of the past which contained reminders of the inevitability of death. Mauri shares the shift from interpretation to presentation with contemporary British photographer Richard Learoyd whose flowers are stilled. Even though they use different techniques, both photographers manage to bring out the life of dead objects. For instance, when Mauri used bones, he placed them next to a jug. When he laid a dead flower, a bright lime stood next to it. This randomness is not provocative. Rather, its aim is to release the object, and therefore the still life, from our interpretations. It is the object in itself that matters. In Mauri’s Index of Objects (Grid - Template 49, 2023), we see a grid of still lifes, each containing a single object. Try as we may to find a connection between them there is none. In fact, the composition itself was not intended. Our thinking is in a state of suspension. Now, it is the object that stands still. Pensive.

Dominique Mauri calibrates rest as a set of new relations both within and outside the image. He turns interpretation into contemplation and technique into care. Stillness is diligently worked through and unveils many layers to his work. Beyond delicate beauty, there is a theatre of novel things, showing objects standing still. 

Farida Youssef

April 2023

Cairo

Farida Youssef is a writer and curator based in Cairo. She holds an MA in European Philosophy with distinction from UCL. She was a Merut fellow at the British Museum where she researched the Egyptian collection through the lens of contemporary philosophy. She is interested in the value of spatial theory for artistic inquiries.

[1]  From conversation with Dominique Mauri, April 1st, 2023, Cairo.

[2] From conversation with Dominique Mauri, April 1st, 2023, Cairo.

[3] Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity (Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University, 1997), 199.