On a brisk spring day in the late 1980s, Nicole Wisniak was directing a photo shoot with the photographer Max Vadukul by the fountain of the Paris Observatory. Vadukul wanted one of the models to jump into the water. “It’s too cold, no way,” she protested. Wisniak, fully clothed, threw herself under the powerful water jets. “Now you can do it,” she said. The model had no choice.
This is how, for the past thirty-seven years, Wisniak has run the magazine Egoïste, which seems like an anachronism in our fast-paced day and age. Issue No. 17 hit the stands on January 23rd. Seventeen issues in thirty-seven years—it’s a little ridiculous. Egoïste is scheduled to appear “spasmodically,” says the writer and friend Jean-Paul Enthoven. The first issue came out in 1977. The second, a month later. The third, six months later. A year later, the fourth, and so it went. Issue No. 17 was put together over the course of three years and three months. “We know when we start, but not when we’ll finish,” says photographer Paolo Roversi.
“Egoïste is a phoenix that perishes and is reborn,” says the writer Marc Lambron. Wisniak seems more tormented than overworked. Another one of her friends, journalist Patrick Besson, thinks Nicole is, “a little bit lazy, so she puts together this little journal with her writer friends.” Nicole replies: “A slow pace gives you distance, and distance gives you wisdom.”
The first issue was slim, and three or four thousand copies ended up in the basement. The latest issue boasts 256 pages in two volumes weighing five pounds. The 25,000 copies should sell out quickly before the 35€ price inflates through online sales.
Time is elastic in Egoïste, but otherwise nothing has changed: the invasive format, photo-friendly but shelf-averse, the matte white paper, the Jansenist layout, the deep black-and-white, the absence of colors, the Garamond font, the dazzling printing, the folding pages—staple-free to protect the photos. It exudes a classical beauty carried by the harmonious balance between elegant imagery and the writers’ off-beat texts.
Read the full article in the French version of L’Oeil.
Article written by Michel Guerrin
In Le Monde of January 22nd, 2015
MAGAZINE
Egoïste #17
35 €
http://www.journalegoiste.com
