GUY DELISLE at Books Inc. Palo Alto

Books Inc. Palo Alto welcomes graphic novelist Guy Delisle to the shop for a celebration of his new book Muybridge!

Guy will be in conversation with Scott Bukatman, a cultural theorist and Professor of Film and Media Studies at Stanford University.

How do you capture a changing world in the blink of an eye?

Sacramento, California, 1870. Pioneer photographer Eadweard Muybridge becomes entangled in railroad robber baron Leland Stanford’s delusions of grandeur. Tasked with proving Stanford’s belief that a horse’s hooves do not touch the ground while galloping at full speed, Muybridge gets to work with his camera. In doing so, he inadvertently creates one of the single most important technological advancements of our age—the invention of time-lapse photography and the mechanical ability to capture motion.

Critically-acclaimed cartoonist Guy Delisle (Pyongyang, Hostage) returns with another engrossing foray into nonfiction: a biography about Eadweard Muydbridge, the man who made pictures move. Despite career breakthrough after career breakthrough, Muybridge would only be hampered by betrayal, intrigue, and tragedy. Delisle’s keen eye for details that often go unnoticed in search of a broader emotional truth brings this historical figure and those around him to life through an uncompromising lens.

Translated from the French by Helge Dascher & Rob Aspinall, Muybridge turns a spotlight on what lives in the shadow of an individual’s ambition for greatness, and proves that Eadweard Muybridge deserves to be far more than just another historical footnote.

“[Delisle] must be counted as one of the greatest cartoonists of our age.”—The Guardian

“Delisle's graphic novels take readers on journeys both startlingly unfamiliar and some perhaps all too relatable.”—CBC Books

“Minimal line[s and] personable observational style.”—The Paris Review

“Delisle, a former animator, has a knack for visual shorthand (his self-­portrait is a few jauntily canted lines with dots for eyes) and for drawing environments.”—The New York Times

Born in Québec City, Canada, in 1966, Guy Delisle now lives in the south of France with his wife and two children. Delisle spent ten years working in animation, which allowed him to learn about movement and drawing. He is best known for his travelogues about life in faraway countries, Burma Chronicles, Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, Pyongyang, and Shenzhen.

Scott Bukatman is a cultural theorist and Professor of Film and Media Studies at Stanford University. Bukatman's research examines how popular media and genres "mediate between new technologies and human perceptual and bodily experience."

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