TAKE A SEAT by Natalie Tischler

TAKE A SEAT, a new photobook by Natalie Tischler, brings together the artist’s photographs alongside images contributed by people from different cities and places, exploring one of the most ordinary objects in everyday life: the chair.

The project began with a single chair in Tischler’s neighborhood. Over several days, she watched it change: first with cardboard covering its seat, then a rock placed on top, and eventually another chair stacked above it. Curious about this mysteriously changing object, Tischler began photographing abandoned chairs she encountered. What started as a personal observation soon became a collective project, inviting others to submit photographs with timestamps and optional captions. As interest grew, more than 100 photographs arrived in a single month.

Inspired by Georges Perec’s concept of the infra-ordinary, TAKE A SEAT turns its attention to the habitual, mundane, and easily overlooked. Through repetition and accumulation, the chair becomes more than an everyday object. It becomes a way of exploring how attention shapes perception, and how something once unnoticed becomes impossible to ignore.

Natalie Tischler (b. 1999) is an artist and spatial designer based in New York. Her work—and life—is grounded in ordinary moments, textures, patterns, and images of everyday experience. She is interested in how we see, think, and move through the world, often explored through language, observation, and design.

Publisher: Makan
Editor: Ibi Ibrahim
Designer: Bastien Forato
Illustrations: 497 images
ISBN: 979-8-9974485-0-9
First Edition