Introduction by Moyra Davey. Translation by Christine Pichini. Afterword by Thomas Simmonet.
Guibert’s photo novel exploring the reclusive lives of his great-aunts, published in English for the first time
The protagonists of Suzanne and Louise, the second book by French writer and photographer Hervé Guibert, are his elderly great-aunts, who lived alone in a large townhouse in Paris’ 15th arrondissement. The older sister controlled the finances while the younger, a former nun, did the housekeeping. During a series of weekly visits from their grandnephew, these reclusive women offered up their home and their bodies to his camera. The resulting images would grow into Guibert’s first and only photo novel, a provocative exploration of fantasy, mortality and desire. Originally published in France in 1980, and highly sought after by fans of Guibert, Suzanne and Louise is reissued here for the first time in a full English translation by Christine Pichini, a new introduction by artist and writer Moyra Davey and an account of the book’s origins by Thomas Simmonet—director of the Parisian publishing house Les Éditions de Minuit—complete with testimonials, documentation, unpublished photographs and contact sheets. Hervé Guibert (1955–91) was the author of 25 books and published extensive texts and criticism on photography, primarily with the French newspaper Le Monde. His bestselling novel To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life (1990) was inspired by his close friend Michel Foucault and the two men’s experiences living with AIDS, which tragically ended Guibert’s life at the age of 36.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Wayne Koestenbaum
All of Hervé Guibert’s work, whether image or text, has a strange taboo luminousness—the glow of vistas we’re not supposed to see or name—tableaux at once classically severe and lushly coiling. In Suzanne and Louise, one of Guibert’s most important performances, the queer heat of Suddenly, Last Summer takes on the solemnity of a missal, or a Parisian passion-play remake of Grey Gardens, or Gide on speed. Hervé’s aunts unveil their hair and their feet, their abstemious privacy, their cool-toned beauty of gesture and visage. Christine Pichini, in her exemplary, elegant translation, unearths luminous English equivalents for the no-nonsense refinement of Guibert’s French.
Maggie Nelson
This is an extraordinary book, of critical importance both to newcomers to Guibert and to longtime fans. It’s a fascinating, uncanny portrait not just of Guibert’s great-aunts, but also of the miraculous role art can play in transmuting its subjects, through curiosity and attentiveness, into significant, nearly historical-feeling figures. It may be brief, but I feel certain that it will never leave me.
Frieze
Andrew Durbin
[A] lesser-known masterpiece by an author famous for his revelatory fiction and sumptuous photographs.
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Published by Magic Hour Press. Introduction by Moyra Davey. Translation by Christine Pichini. Afterword by Thomas Simmonet.
Guibert’s photo novel exploring the reclusive lives of his great-aunts, published in English for the first time
The protagonists of Suzanne and Louise, the second book by French writer and photographer Hervé Guibert, are his elderly great-aunts, who lived alone in a large townhouse in Paris’ 15th arrondissement. The older sister controlled the finances while the younger, a former nun, did the housekeeping. During a series of weekly visits from their grandnephew, these reclusive women offered up their home and their bodies to his camera. The resulting images would grow into Guibert’s first and only photo novel, a provocative exploration of fantasy, mortality and desire.
Originally published in France in 1980, and highly sought after by fans of Guibert, Suzanne and Louise is reissued here for the first time in a full English translation by Christine Pichini, a new introduction by artist and writer Moyra Davey and an account of the book’s origins by Thomas Simmonet—director of the Parisian publishing house Les Éditions de Minuit—complete with testimonials, documentation, unpublished photographs and contact sheets.
Hervé Guibert (1955–91) was the author of 25 books and published extensive texts and criticism on photography, primarily with the French newspaper Le Monde. His bestselling novel To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life (1990) was inspired by his close friend Michel Foucault and the two men’s experiences living with AIDS, which tragically ended Guibert’s life at the age of 36.
