Ghost Image
Translated by Robert Bononno
160 pages
|
5 1/4 x 8
|
© 1996
- Contents
- Review Quotes
Table of Contents

Contents
"I used to dream ... "
Ghost Image
First Love
The Perfect Image
The Erotic Picture
Photo Souvenir (East Berlin)
A Family Photograph
A Fantasy
Inventory of a Box of Photographs
A Possible Photo Sequence for Bernard Faucon
Home Movies
Holography
Identity Photograph I
Identity Photograph II
Photobooth (Florence)
Self-Portrait
The Album
The x-ray
Identification
The Hotel Room
Example of a Travel Photograph
Photographic Writing
Contact Sheet
The Insult
The Camera
The Fetish
The Threat
A Fantasy II
"The majority of your stories ... "
Diffraction
The Rings
Premeditation
The Session
Advice
The Beautiful Image
Suite, Series, Sequence
Pornography
Porno Bis
Red Tape
The Collection
The Fovea
The Bus
Dance
Polaroid
Favorite Photographs
The Article
"Photography has infiltrated your life ... "
A Fantasy III
The Betrayal
The Proof
The Photograph, as Close to Death as Possible
A Fantasy iv
A Cruel Act
Proof by the Absurd
A Memorial for Simple Hearts
“T. told me…”
Return to the Beloved Image
The Cancerous Image
Secrets
The Retouching Artist
The Fake
Transparencies
The Pharmacist of Rue Vaugirard
Ghost Image
First Love
The Perfect Image
The Erotic Picture
Photo Souvenir (East Berlin)
A Family Photograph
A Fantasy
Inventory of a Box of Photographs
A Possible Photo Sequence for Bernard Faucon
Home Movies
Holography
Identity Photograph I
Identity Photograph II
Photobooth (Florence)
Self-Portrait
The Album
The x-ray
Identification
The Hotel Room
Example of a Travel Photograph
Photographic Writing
Contact Sheet
The Insult
The Camera
The Fetish
The Threat
A Fantasy II
"The majority of your stories ... "
Diffraction
The Rings
Premeditation
The Session
Advice
The Beautiful Image
Suite, Series, Sequence
Pornography
Porno Bis
Red Tape
The Collection
The Fovea
The Bus
Dance
Polaroid
Favorite Photographs
The Article
"Photography has infiltrated your life ... "
A Fantasy III
The Betrayal
The Proof
The Photograph, as Close to Death as Possible
A Fantasy iv
A Cruel Act
Proof by the Absurd
A Memorial for Simple Hearts
“T. told me…”
Return to the Beloved Image
The Cancerous Image
Secrets
The Retouching Artist
The Fake
Transparencies
The Pharmacist of Rue Vaugirard
Review Quotes
Wayne Koestenbaum | Bookforum
“Why has no thoughtful publisher translated and published all of Guibert’s works, in trim editions, each cover graced with his seraphic image? . . . To get Guibert’s full message, which isn’t light-years apart from Susan Sontag’s and Frank O’Hara’s New York–based credos (pay attention, live as variously as possible) but that chose for its transmission not the lyric or the essay but the autofiction, the fragmentary self-articulation, casual as a snapshot, would involve questioning straitened notions of what constitutes a polished piece of writing, or a life’s work, or an autobiography, or a sexuality, or a successful venture—and learning, instead, to appreciate the cadences of catastrophe, of self-excavating improvisation, and of unknowingness. Futility and botched execution are the immortal matter of Guibert’s method. Futility and botched execution—combined, in Guibert’s work, with finesse, concision, and a heavy dose of negative capability, which includes curiosity about the worst things that can befall a body—are undying aesthetic and spiritual values, worth cherishing in any literature we dare to call our own.”
Zack Hatfield | Los Angeles Review of Books
“‘Photography is also an act of love,’ Guibert begins Ghost Image, his memoir and love letter to the medium written shortly before his death of AIDS. . . . It’s an intriguing first sentence for the implicit suspicion that we think of photography as an act of something else. Hatred, resistance, change. Did Guibert mean that photography was an act of love for the one who snaps the shutter, or, too, for those who view the image?”
Ron Slate | On the Seawall
“Ghost Image is essential Guibert—an artist’s penetrating look at his own profession and obsessions. It is animated and validated by prickly sensations and thrusts of thought that occur during composition—an accomplished photographer’s narrative that exists thanks to the virtuous failures of photos.”
Charles Green | Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE
“Excellent examples of Hervé Guibert’s talent and style. A French writer and photographer who died from AIDS in 1991 at the age of 36, Guibert drew much of his work from his own life and his love of photography. He was especially interested in the surprising effects photographs can produce on people, not just on the subject and observers but also on the photographer as well.”
Daniel Boyd-Barrett, Urban Outfitters Men's Concept Designer | Urban Outfitters Blog
"Can you share a list of the things that are currently inspiring you? Current book: Hervé Guibert, Ghost Image."
Sacha Burrows, photographer | Noctis
“Such a beautiful book.”
Kate Zambreno, author of "O Fallen Angel" and "Green Girl" | Book Culture Blog
“[One of] my favorite books.”
Kirkus
“Guibert’s rhythmic descriptions of his relationship to images at various stages of his life manage to convey the transience of life and memory that the photographer is always struggling to overcome. . . . A lyrical, elegiac celebration of the medium and its implications—a provocative and highly original investigation.”
Publishers Weekly
“Quick, candid, and exquisitely felt.”
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