Hervé Guibert: Suzanne and Louise

Magic Hour Press, 2024, softcover, 144 pages, 17 x 22cm

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Simmonet―director of the Parisian publishing house Les Éditions de Minuit―complete with testimonials, documentation, unpublished photographs and contact sheets.