Accidentally Wes Anderson by Wally Koval (2020)

Book review.

Wes Anderson is an American filmmaker with a distinctive visual style.  His films (two recent examples, Asteroid City and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar) lean heavily into static, symmetrical shots with an apparently deliberately limited color palette that mimics (sometimes) faded Kodachrome.  Accidentally successfully copies this look.

The images here are not by the author, Wally Koval, who wrote the descriptions of these mostly architectural scenes, but rather by an improbably large team of over 100 photographers.  It is not clear from the text whether the photos were found or commissioned. 

I am intrigued by symmetry.  A quick check of my website finds maybe 50 examples of varying degrees of left mirroring right, although I try to break up that symmetry with low-angle early-morning light (usually from the left – not sure why).  And, except for one recent exception, I prefer true (albeit within a narrow range) color or black & white.

Should a photographer, or any artist, have such a distinctive style that the source is immediately apparent?  It’s not hard to identify a previously unseen Georgia O’Keefe, and it takes only a few notes from Pat Metheny to know who is playing the guitar.  If critics start complaining about my photographs then I’ll consider whether to worry about being too predictable.

Although many of the photos are of recognizable buildings, I particularly like the ones of more obscure subjects:  “Pancakes Stand” by Cathy Tideswell, “Ice-Fishing Shacks” by Stephan Graveline, “Viewfinder” by Savannah Sher, and others.  I give Accidentally Wes Anderson five f-stops (out of five), although it seems like it should be called Intentionally Wes Anderson.

My copy was from the public library in Ukiah, CA.

More AWA can be found here, and a new book, Accidentally Wes Anderson: Adventures will be published in October 2024.