Le Depays - Chris Marker

Le Dépays by Chris Marker / ISBN 9798986446349 / 88-page hardback published in 2024 by Film Desk Books

***

This is the first English language edition of Chris Marker’s 1982 photo-essay, Le Dépays. Lovingly adapted from the original design, it features Marker’s own translation astride some of his most exquisite, yet rarely seen, black-and-white photography. Realized over the same years as its film companion, Sans Soleil, the book traces similar themes—cats and owls and Japan—but without ever leaving Golden-Gai for Guinea-Bissau. Musing among department store maneki-neko and dreamers on the metro, wandering between Tokyo and no-place at all, this is nevertheless a unique glimpse of Marker feeling very much himself and quite at home; that is, delightfully disoriented.

“Inventing Japan is just another way of getting to know it . . . Trust appearances, consciously confuse the decor with the drama, never worry about understanding, just be there—dasein—and everything will come your way. Well, something, at least...”—Chris Marker, from Le Dépays

Chris Marker, 1921–2012. Filmed, photographed, traveled, loved cats.

With a new introduction by writer and artist Sadie Rebecca Starnes.