Guy Delisle

In this graphic memoir Delisle chronicles what it’s like to live and work in East Jerusalem for a year, while his wife works for an NGO. What should have been a pretty straightforward travelogue became an illuminating if somewhat one-sided perspective of the everyday lives of Palestinians living on the fringe of Israel. The indignities, long waits, constant tension, and really the boredom that comes with living within East Jerusalem are well detailed with Delisle’s subtly simple black show more and white line drawings. Delisle clearly feels for the plight of the Palestinians. And while I can sympathize with Delisle’s views, the lack of an Israeli perspective, outside the settlements, strips away any nuance and begs the question how can Israelis reconcile the conditions of the Arab neighbors are forced to endure. I’m not saying his viewpoint is wrong necessarily but unlike his other memoirs Israel proper is a free and open country where a whole host of views and perspectives can be expressed. It would have been nice to get a counterpoint or two along with the stories of the Palestinians. show less

It's quite an authorial feat to write about a visit to the authoritarian dystopia of North Korea and to leave the impression that you, the author, are the most unsavoury element in the book!

I'm overstating it, I guess, but Delisle's graphic bio of his two month sojourn to North Korea overseeing an animation sweatshop (little evidence of his awareness of the exploitative nature of this) is characterised by his sneery arrogance and lack of empathy for the oppressed Korean people required to show more work with him, and then there's the instances of unsavoury sexism 🤢

There is still interest in his depiction of life amongst the Western enclave of corporate employees, diplomats and NGO workers in the North Korean capital, but sadly marred by a compassionless, supercilious authorial voice. 2.5⭐ show less

I have mixed feelings about Eadweard Muybridge, a 19th century photographer dubbed by some as the "father of the motion picture," but my feelings about this engaging biography of him are quite clear and positive.

Muybridge was born in England, but first came to notice for his nature photography in remote areas of the U.S.A. Then he managed to overcome the slow and cumbersome process of photography of his era to capture the first rapid-fire series of sequential photographs of a horse show more galloping. He then showed his dozen pictures in a loop, creating one of the world's first GIFs.

But the dude also seemed to suffer from a traumatic brain injury following a stagecoach crash that possibly affected his personality, making him perhaps a bit unpredictable, obsessive, and aggressive, culminating in him getting away with a little bit of murder. Yikes!

Guy Delisle covers a lot of ground quickly, but I never felt lost or bored as he zeroed in on the crucial moments and included the actual photographs being discussed. show less

In the late 1990s, a French NGO administrator called Christophe André was kidnapped from his posting in Ingushetia, a breakaway region in the Caucasus. Guy Delisle's art conveys André's experiences during his three months of captivity—the dim gloom of being chained up indoors, the monotony of repeated panels, the feeling of being unmoored in time and place. André is resilient, but not an action hero—he's one person with no weapons surrounded by a number of people with many of them, show more with no knowledge of Chechen or where he is. Delisle's recreation of his experiences are a meditative act of empathy, asking what you, as an ordinary person, would do if you too found yourself in such extraordinary circumstances. show less