Suzanne and Louise

Daisy Alioto on a reissued photo novel by Hervé Guibert.

Diane Arbus said that photography happens between action and repose. That is certainly true in the 1980 photo novel Suzanne and Louise by Hervé Guibert, depicting the domestic life of his elderly great-aunts. The book is being reissued this month in full English translation by Magic Hour Press.

“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,” writes the publisher.

Hervé Guibert—known for his Bernhardian prose and close relationship with Foucault—became a global name after his literary and film depictions of living with AIDs. Suzanne and Louise also addresses death, but with a sense of life extended rather than cut short.

In these photographs, action is an unwound braid, an unturned page, a foot rub. Repose is a return to the natural state—stillness and contemplation, both of the other and the self inside a sister (or nephew’s) gaze.

Keep scrolling for a selection of photographs from Suzanne and Louise, courtesy of the publisher. 

THIS WEEK IN TASTELAND

This week, Daisy and Francis welcome journalists Teddy Brown and Emily Shugerman. Teddy recently covered Zyn and its masculine political symbolism for the New York Times, while Emily explored direct-to-consumer women’s health brands for The Guardian.