Egypt’s Mundanity and Soft Beauty in Xenia Nikolskaya’s Photo Series “Unnecessary Necessity”

During her near two-decade sojourn in Egypt, Russian-born photographer, academic and artist Xenia Nikolskaya has been documenting the grand architectural past of the country’s forgotten palaces and grand buildings, which were once the symbol of Egypt’s emergence as one of the regions and world’s notable powers. This collection of photographs, which started in 2006, was latterly compiled into the much-celebrated photography book first published in 2012, “Dust: Egypt’s Forgotten Architecture”. Nikolskaya would latterly publish a photographic memoir of her family’s history entitled “The House My Grandfather Built”, telling the history of Russia and the Soviet Union starting from the 1930s and documenting the storied fate of her priest grandfather who was sent to the Gulags during the Stalinist terror. Of particular note, though, is another, less known collection of photographs which capture ordinary Egyptian street life, humour and movement- a yet unreleased series of photographs which goes vaguely under the title of “Unnecessary Necessity”.

“This collection is raw, and it is unfiltered,” shares Nikolskaya with Dazed. The collection is ongoing and begins in 2006, around the time Nikolskaya first began her work on “Dust”- it was a constant side project which she felt was important, picturing moments which to her were either artistically or atmospherically notable while she was conducting the serious academic project which would latterly be compiled into “Dust”. “If in “Dust” I was an academic and researcher concerned with a classic style of photography, and if in “The House My Grandfather Built” I was a human, and a storyteller, concerned with my own personal history, in “Unnecessary Necessity” I am simply a photographer concerned with silhouettes, stories and movement,” says Nikolskaya. “I have softly entitled this collection “Unnecessary Necessity” as an indicator of the idea that there are things that the photographer photographs because they cannot not photograph it. Perhaps there is no purpose, no reason, no plan behind it, because ultimately the act of photography is about collection, and about recognition.”

Here, Nikolskaya tells the story of the everyman, of events, of people concerned with nothing in particular- it is Egypt in its simultaneous mundanity and soft beauty. It is the wedding party conducted in the sitting room of an ordinary family, it is little boys at Christmas Mass at Abbaseya’s Coptic Cathedral, it is fishermen and butchers during the Eid Al Adha festival. “For me many of these images represent a moment when I was an observer. I believe in an artistic practice which dictates that when one attends some kind of social event where there is a crowd or audience, one should photograph not the central happenings, but the reactions and bodies of those partaking in the event- here is the character, the history, and the actual moment,” Nikolskaya reflects, “as a photographer one has to be engaged in this moment of trying to see.”

When asked about the artistic implication of conducting an ongoing project spanning nearly twenty years, and the meaning in it, Nikolskaya comments on the fact that the artistic project is a lifelong and neverending conception. “The photos are often, like in “Unnecessary Necessity”, a reflection of what goes on in the life of the artist- an ongoing journey.

Although yet to be formally compiled into a book, “Unnecessary Necessity” is a collection that will interest any lover of Egypt, of people, of movement, and of this ongoing artistic project to which many creators subscribe. It is a storytelling machine, capturing the beauty in the everyday moments which create countries, cities, nations and communities. “In some ways I am selfish- this collection is not a socio-political diatribe nor is it wanting to create a specific reaction, it is simply images which I found I had to take. It is human.”