And Suddenly into Nothing Suzanne Doppelt Translated by Cole Swensen 2026 ///////// 84 Pages ///////// 12.7 x 20.3 cm ISBN: 9781915341297
In the middle of a London park, a couple behaves strangely under the gaze of a photographer who happens to be there and captures them through his viewfinder. When he realizes that he may have witnessed a crime while thinking he was photographing a simple encounter, the park becomes a theater. The scene, usually mundane, opens and closes at the same time, becoming a genre scene that he will attempt to elucidate in the chemical bath of his laboratory and through an on-site investigation. The photographer has seen what he will never see again, or thought he saw, or perhaps did not see. A murder has undoubtedly taken place, and the park is an incredible trap for his gaze, but nothing will come of it, and the mystery remains unsolved.
This book revolves primarily around Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow Up, but also Julio Cortazar's short story Les fils de la vierge, which inspired it, and Witold Gombrowicz's novel La pornographie.
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Suzanne Doppelt studied philosophy and taught for several years. Since 1995, she has been writing and taking photographs. Most of her books have been published by P.O.L.
Her books, from Totem to Un beau masque prend l’air, explore questions of perception: what do we see, and how do we know what we are seeing?
Her work approaches these questions through a remarkable range of subjects: spiritualist images in Le pré est vénéneux; anamorphoses in Lazy Suzie; a painting by Jacopo de’ Barbari in La plus grande aberration; a theatre saturated with signs in Amusements de mécanique; an optical box in Vak Spectra; and a soap bubble in Rien à cette magie. Meta donna explores the tarantula and the phenomenon of tarantism in Puglia in the 1960s. Her new title Et tout soudain en rien (And Suddenly into Nothing- Pamenar Press) engages with Antonioni’s film Blow-Up, while Un beau masque prend l’air revolves around seventeen paintings featuring animals.
Her books have been translated in the United States, Norway, Uruguay, Brazil, and Italy.She has exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, the French Institute in Naples, the Martine Aboucaya Gallery, the Louvre Museum, NYU, and the cipM, among others.She co-founded the magazine Détail with Pierre Alferi and was a member of the editorial board of Vacarme. She also edited the collection Le rayon des curiosités for Bayard.
Winner of the Villa Médicis hors les murs (Naples)
Residency at the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes, Paris
Residency at the Maison de Victor Hugo, Paris
Residency Le Nôtre, Versailles, with Cole Swensen
2020: Residency at the Michalski Foundation, Switzerland
Cole Swensen has twenty books of poetry out, most recently Veer (Alice James Books, 2026). A former Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of the Iowa Poetry Prize, among others, she has also been a finalist for the Griffin Prize, the National Book Award, and the LA Times Book Award and was awarded the 2025 Paul Engle Prize by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature. Also a translator, she is the translation editor for the journal Fence and has won the 2004 PEN USA Award in Translation, the 2024 ALTA National Translation Prize, and the 2025 Stephen Mitchell Prize.