206 pages Text(s) by William Mac Lean 23 x 18 cm Language: French Hardback Publisher: Maisonneuve et Larose 1970
French-language comics and photo-stories marketed to adults sit alongside anonymous graffiti from Paris and its outskirts in William McLean’s study of popular erotic imagery. The book brings together two very different settings for these images: publications made for readers and drawings scratched into the city’s walls.
Over five years, McLean photographed markings on limestone and plaster, recording details that could disappear when a wall was cleaned or resurfaced. His attention to recurring motifs shows how a familiar sign could change meaning as later hands added to it. Read alongside the printed examples, these photographs make the book an early study of Parisian graffiti and a record of how erotic imagery circulated in everyday life.
