Anne Day: Les Flashes D'Anne

Salvaged from a devastating fire, Day's photographs and stories provide glimpses into her close friendship with author Herve Guibert

In the fall of 2013, the house of American photographer Anne Day burnt to the ground. A few of her prints and negatives survived in a file cabinet but had become completely charred: only remnants of images and traces of a younger self remained. A close friend of hers in the early 1980s was the French photographer and author Herve Guibert (1955-91). They worked together on magazine assignments for Le Monde, profiling Orson Welles, Jane Fonda and the antique dealer Madeleine Castaing, to name a few. When not working, they took day trips to the seaside; Guibert introduced Day to his Parisian circle of friends. He took her to see performances by Pina Bausch and Mark Morris and they dined with Cartier-Bresson and Duane Michals. While Day made her living as a photographer, it was the photos she took of her grandmother that Guibert loved the most. Taking its title from an article Guibert wrote about Day, this volume mixes Day's burnt prints with her anecdotes about the people she knew and the places she frequented.