Writing Tablets, Mazarine Library, Paris

Writing Tablets, Mazarine Library, Paris | 1996

Black and white film photographs laminated on aluminum

Series of thirty writing desks on which the number corresponds to the location allocated to the reader in the library.
The light is that found in the moment, a lamp on or off, with or without the shadow cast by the base of the lamp, near a window or geographically located in a perfectly neutral space.

Here are more transitory objects that bear traces of notes taken by researchers in illustrious places of learning.
These are the patinated surfaces of writing desks from three libraries: the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), the Mazarine and the Vatican libraries.

Yet these three series are qualitatively different. The surfaces of the writing desks of the BNF are made of several layers of lacquered wood. Flayed and flaking in places, their scars are presented in an image-like way, suggesting fanciful geographies that are sometimes surprisingly realistic, and sometimes scattered with enigmatic markings that seem like strange cryptograms floating in space, reminiscent of the countless words that have been traced upon them.

The writing surfaces in the Mazarine library are made of leather, giving them a more discreet, finer patina. Some of them look like celestial nebulae, glistening under the lights that shine down on the reader.
The surfaces of the writing desks in the Vatican library, made of fabric stuck on wood are closer to the Blackboards. They are the most textured, marked by the wear and tear of time. Stained, scarred, strewn with fingerprints, curiously more terrestrial than aerial, they evoke lumpy ground, trodden over by countless passages.

1. Writing Tablet n°19, Mazarine Library, Paris – 1996
60 x 60 cm

2. Writing Tablet n°41, Mazarine Library, Paris – 1996
60 x 60 cm

3. Writing Tablet n°43, Mazarine Library, Paris – 1996
60 x 60 cm

4. Writing Tablet n°45, Mazarine Library, Paris – 1996
60 x 60 cm

5. Writing Tablet n°49, Mazarine Library, Paris – 1996
60 x 60 cm

6. Writing Tablet n°50, Mazarine Library, Paris – 1996
60 x 60 cm

7. Writing Tablet n°51, Mazarine Library, Paris – 1996
60 x 60 cm

8. Writing Tablet n°53, Mazarine Library, Paris – 1996
60 x 60 cm

9. Writing Tablet n°54, Mazarine Library, Paris – 1996
60 x 60 cm

10. Writing Tablet n°64, Mazarine Library, Paris – 1996
60 x 60 cm

11. Writing Tablet n°65, Mazarine Library, Paris – 1996
60 x 60 cm

12. Writing Tablet n°91, Mazarine Library, Paris – 1996
60 x 60 cm