Eye Contact

Simon Beuret

French, Atrabile, 2023

A genius! The man says to himself as he looks at his own drawings. His routine is almost that of a hunter: observing, tracking, then identifying a scene or a person and capturing it/them without anyone noticing – and above all without meeting their eye. Eye contact must be avoided at all costs. But one day his routine changes because he, the observer, has found someone cleverer than himself: the hunter becomes the prey when an unpredictable young woman escapes his notice and spots him …
Eye Contact is a crime novel without a crime, an investigation without a detective, a chase whose subject constantly stays hidden and in which the mystery is something else. However, Eye Contact is above all an amazing declaration of love to drawing. Throughout his first book, Simon Beuret evokes the solitude of those who observe as well as the obsessive side of it that could be disguised as artistic practice, and in doing so creates an intimate odyssey full of charm and humour.

Title
Eye Contact
Publisher
Atrabile
Translation rights
Sarah Lapalu (eddy agency), sarah@eddy-agency.com
Publication date
March 2023
Pages
168
ISBN
9782889231263

Author

Simon Beuret

Simon Beuret was born in 1991 in Jura, Switzerland. He studied illustration at the Lucerne School of Art and Design and contributes to magazines, such as Stripburger and Strapazin. He works as an author and illustrator in his atelier at the cultural centre Terrain Gurzelen in Biel/Bienne and is employed as a part time lithographer at an engraving workshop (l’atelier de gravure Moutier). Simon Beuret studied tailing people for a long time. Firstly, he interviewed several private detectives who shared their observation techniques with him. Then, he tailed numerous people by secretly following them on the street and collecting drawings and information in the small fanfold books made for the occasion. He spent two months in New York, where he filled the sketch books that are now the main material for his story. The urban setting and some personalities in the graphic novel were directly inspired by the drawings he made in the city.

Photo: ©: Atrabile2022