Reperages (photos by Alain Resnais)

First edition of Repereges (Locations), a book of 77 moody, cinematic photographs taken between 1948 and 1974 by famed French filmmaker Alain Resnais (Night and Fog; Hiroshima Mon Amour), published in 1974 by Chene. Edited and with introductory text by Jorge Samprun, screenwriter for two Resnais films. The grainy, full-page photos indeed represent prospective location shots for planned but unrealized film projects in cities including London, Paris, New York, and Hiroshima. Each series of shots suggests a narrative arc, downbeat and anti-glamorous, largely devoid of people. Per film critic James Hoberman, Resnais favors docks, back alleys, pedestrian underpasses, and empty lots, as well as grim urban monoliths. Hoberman concludes: “In a way, Reperages is a baroque version of [Chris] Marker’s 1962 classic La Jetee (The Jetty), a time-traveling, motion photo-roman composed almost entirely of still photographs. Were Reperages similarly transformed, it would rank alongside the best of Resnais’s movies. That the term reperages can also be used to refer to the synchronization of sound and image suggests he might even have considered the possibility.” Oblong 8vo, 168 pages, with publisher’s laminated photographic boards. Light chipping and rubbing to extremities. Some delaminating to rear joint. Scarce.