Lips that would kiss
Lips that would kiss
2009
23 photographs
Bartleby & Co., 2011
It is like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, A penny for the old guy
Ian Curtis, 15.07.1956–18.05.1980
In January 2009, we went to Manchester. One of us as a photographer, the other as a writer, with the same goal in mind: to find out what the name Ian Curtis really meant to us. The urban backdrop of the city and the thread of our explorations through areas linked to Curtis’s life created the net we cast to capture something of his name. On our return, the two things became even more closely bonded by the juxtaposition of photography and text, which in no way is meant to be hagiographic (we did not intend to retrace his footsteps) but aspires much more to being a blank screen for anonymous projections.
Julie Cortella & Benoît Grimbert
*Letter from Ian Curtis to Annik Honoré (25 February 1980)