The Archive That Stares Back

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

on Nelly Monnier and the slow politics of vernacular presence

There are forms of disappearance that are not violent, not sudden, not even visible.
They are slow, silent, bureaucratic. They dissolve through neglect. They fade through non-recognition.
Nelly Monnier’s work inhabits that zone.
She does not mourn it. She documents it — precisely, rigorously, tenderly.

Together with Éric Tabuchi, she constructs an Atlas of Natural Regions — a vast, coherent, carefully edited cartography of vernacular architectures across France.
Each volume is not a nostalgic inventory, nor a fetishized typology.
It is an act of resistance: a way of holding space for forms that are disappearing without crisis.
Not ruins. Not catastrophes. Just ordinary structures too unremarkable to be saved.

These houses, chapels, cinemas, abandoned signs and facades — they do not scream for attention.
They do not seduce the viewer. They exist on the periphery of desire.
And that is precisely where Monnier’s gaze becomes radical.
She looks without appropriation. She frames without aestheticizing.
Her lens does not transform the building into “art” — it recognizes it as already sufficient.

The project’s structure reinforces this ethic.
Each volume is regionally grounded, meticulously organized.
Each photograph is titled with exact coordinates.
Every element resists the extractive tendencies of contemporary visual culture.
Nothing is up for sale. Everything is being held, acknowledged, and re-situated.

There is a politics in this practice.
Not a politics of slogans or resistance aesthetics.
But a slow politics — one that maps the real not as spectacle, but as presence.
And in doing so, Monnier (alongside Tabuchi) constructs a living archive that stares back.
It reminds us that erasure is not always violent.
Sometimes it looks like forgetfulness, paved roads, new zoning regulations.
Sometimes it looks like a house with all its shutters closed.

But the archive sees it.
The archive remembers.

And Nelly Monnier is one of its quietest, fiercest architects.