Beckett

Beckett is the result of a littleknown encounter that took place over 30 years ago in Tangiers, between the then-burgeoning photographer François-Marie Banier and the great Irish-born writer Samuel Beckett. Banier kept spotting Beckett’s iconically gaunt and tapering frame—“a marshbird vanished in the middle of the crowd of Moroccans in djellabahs and indifferent tourists”—and was so entranced by his curious movements and features that he determined to photograph him. Of course when they finally met Banier forgot all about his camera, preferring instead to listen to Beckett’s tales of “the 27 books he couldn’t find a publisher for, of his wife Suzanne, of his friendship with Joyce, of his family in Ireland.” Eventually recovering his photographer’s eye, Banier stepped back behind the camera to take this fantastic sequence of photographs, published here for the first time, and unmatched as a portrait of the great writer.