Dust

“Large, carefully composed and beautifully lit images”—Sunday Telegraph

“Stunning”—Plain Magazine

“Very arresting images”—BBC

“Extraordinary . . . The book documents the abandoned palaces and salons of an Egypt you don’t often see in the headlines: the golden age of Cairene opulence.”—Roads & Kingdoms

“Her painterly compositions and lambent lighting (which in most cases is natural) serve to give the impression that these are stage sets, only waiting for the arrival of the actors.”—Voyager

“Dramatic and haunting. . . . . succeeds in capturing the glitz and glamor of a past century as a marzipan filling in dark chocolate, without staging her pictures in an overly sweet way. The illustrated book Dust: Egypt's Forgotten Architecture is thus a wonderfully delicate pastime.”—dis:orient Magazine

“Dust is not just a documentation of these fascinating architectural spaces, it also traces the idea of a typology of absence. . . Avoiding any kind of nostalgia, the book challenges its reader: going back to this Egyptian dust also takes us deep into our own expectations of life and notions of legacy. ”—The Global Journal

“Egypt’s most magnificent buildings have stood unloved–and unlooted–for decades. But a new book of photographs may change that.”—SEVEN

“The Cairo [Nikolskaya] captures with her lens is a European city, its grandeur and dilapidation devoid of exotic oriental motifs and shown as somehow frozen in time.”—The National

“Nikolskaya brings these palaces back to life”—Egypt Today

“Dust explores the conditions and relevance of empty architectural spaces in Egypt, presenting an entwined dualism: dust as materiality that layers the city, literally tracing the passage of time upon urban objects – but also as a temporal metaphor that registers these changes on the level of memories, both past and present.”—Cairo 360

"Nikolskaya’s lens expertly captures an eerie forlornness in some of the places depicted in her book, most of which are rundown and ominous. However, what is perhaps most remarkable about her style is how she directs the viewer's eye to detail after detail, weaving a rich narrative."—The National