Text by Eliot Weinberger. Translated by Elizabeth Zuba.
This exquisitely composed photo-novel by French artist-writer Anouck Durand (born 1975)—collaged from photographic archives, personal letters and propaganda magazines—tells a true story that begins in Albania during World War II, stops in China during the Cold War, and ends in Israel after Communism crumbles.
When the Nazis invaded Albania, teenage partisan Refik Veseli’s Muslim family hid Jewish photographer Mosha Mandil, his wife and two small children. Despite the dire circumstances, Mosha instilled in Refik a great passion for photography, and a friendship was forged in the crucible of war. After liberation, the Mandils left for Israel, inviting Refik to join them, but he stayed behind to contribute to his new nation, not knowing he’d never see his dear friend again.
In a nuanced, wholly imagined story, Durand inhabits Refik’s voice as he narrates his journey to China where—free of Albanian state censors—he attempts to mail a letter to Mosha. She also reveals how photography, used at the behest of merciless state powers, becomes a tool for liberation and human connection. Says Richard McGuire, author of Here: "A timely book about dictatorships, propaganda and friendship. Imagine Art Spiegelman meets Chris Marker, told in gorgeous tricolor photography, a knock out!"
Featured image is reproduced from 'Anouck Durand: Eternal Friendship.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Christian Hawkey
A graphic poem, a photo novel, an archive-based comic book — Eternal Friendship is a rare juxtapositional mix of genre and media, such that history, the history of ideas, and the bodies that mediate both are captured with tone-perfect temporal lucidity.
Richard McGuire
Albania and China? Comrades? Who knew? A timely book about dictatorships, propaganda and friendship. Imagine Art Spiegelman meets Chris Marker, told in gorgeous “tricolor” photography, a knock out!
BOMB Magazine
Marjorie Welish
Indeed, the striking thing about Eternal Friendship is the ordinariness of the photography: an anti-aesthetic of experience rather than of art. The story the images has to tell is that much more suspenseful owing to the benign indifference with which it presents itself.
The New York Times Magazine
Teju Cole
…Durand’s photo-novel (or is it a photo-memoir?) is bewildering, peculiar and smart, a matryoshka doll of a story…A brilliant rerouting of photography that reminds me of those strange documentaries by Werner Herzog, say, or Chris Marker.
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FROM THE BOOK
Andrei Codrescu, author of "THE POSTHUMAN DADA GUIDE"
"The happy social-realist people of Enver Hoxja’s Albanian utopia, like other smiling citizens photographed in the Stalinist empire, look sincere in retrospect. For me, they are exuding nostalgia for a childhood inhabited by the official happiness of people caught in the long exposures of my mother’s photoshop. We lived in a similarly symbolic world, but now, after decades of war and irruptions of tribal bloodshed, I can weep for something so benign-looking. Anouck Durand has managed to create an ambiguity of her own in the very bosom of artifice, with words and photographs that reveal only now, in our shaky present, the dark side of the ordered delirium of an Orwellian world."
One of the more poetic and complex books on our list this past year, Anouck Durand’s collaged photo-novel, Eternal Friendship, recounts the story of a Muslim boy who is influenced by a Jewish photographer whom his family sheltered after the Nazis invaded Albania. Spanning decades and traversing Israel and China, the book is about lifelong connection, art, censorship, persecution, liberation, and the passage of time. It has been excerpted by the Paris Review,LitHub and the Brooklyn Rail; reviewed by BOMB,PhotoEye, and others; and named one of Teju Cole's Best Photo Books of 2017 for the 'New York Times Magazine.' continue to blog
Published by Siglio. Text by Eliot Weinberger. Translated by Elizabeth Zuba.
This exquisitely composed photo-novel by French artist-writer Anouck Durand (born 1975)—collaged from photographic archives, personal letters and propaganda magazines—tells a true story that begins in Albania during World War II, stops in China during the Cold War, and ends in Israel after Communism crumbles.
When the Nazis invaded Albania, teenage partisan Refik Veseli’s Muslim family hid Jewish photographer Mosha Mandil, his wife and two small children. Despite the dire circumstances, Mosha instilled in Refik a great passion for photography, and a friendship was forged in the crucible of war. After liberation, the Mandils left for Israel, inviting Refik to join them, but he stayed behind to contribute to his new nation, not knowing he’d never see his dear friend again.
In a nuanced, wholly imagined story, Durand inhabits Refik’s voice as he narrates his journey to China where—free of Albanian state censors—he attempts to mail a letter to Mosha. She also reveals how photography, used at the behest of merciless state powers, becomes a tool for liberation and human connection. Says Richard McGuire, author of Here: "A timely book about dictatorships, propaganda and friendship. Imagine Art Spiegelman meets Chris Marker, told in gorgeous tricolor photography, a knock out!"
