Henry Wessel: A Dark Thread @ Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris

Henry Wessel Incident No.6 De la série Incidents, 2012 © Henry Wessel; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Henry Wessel Incidents No.2 De la série Incidents, 2012 © Henry Wessel; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Henry Wessel Incidents No.5 De la série Incidents, 2012 © Henry Wessel; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Henry Wessel Incident No.21 De la série Incidents, 2012 © Henry Wessel; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Henry Wessel Nevada, 1975 © Henry Wessel; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Henry Wessel, San Francisco, 1974
© Henry Wessel; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Henry Wessel, Pasadena, California, 1974
© Henry Wessel; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Henry Wessel, Incidents No.27, De la série Incidents, 2012 © Henry Wessel; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Henry Wessel, Waikiki No.12, 1983 © Henry Wessel; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Henry Wessel, California, 1977 © Henry Wessel; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Night Walk No. 5, 1998, De la série Sunset Park
© Henry Wessel; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Night Walk No.21, 1998, De la série Sunset Park
© Henry Wessel; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Henry Wessel, Santa Monica, California, 1989
© Henry Wessel; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

For five decades, Henry Wessel documented intensifying elements of the uncanny present in scenes of everyday life. As an avid fan of film noir and detective fiction, Wessel arranged his images in sequences like storyboards for films so that viewers could try to make connections and imagine stories between pictures that may have been taken years apart. The prolific photographer worked primarily in black and white, developing his own prints with a characteristic soft silver tone. Henry Wessel created an interpretive, mysterious vision of the places he lived in and visited, with a “dark thread” connecting his photographs to one another.

Henry Wessel: A Dark Thread is on view through August 25 at Maison Européenne de la Photographie 5/7 Rue de Fourcy, Paris, France. photographs courtesy of Maison Européenne de la Photographie

A Special Screening of Becky Johnston's 1979 Featurette Sleepless Nights With Maripol @ MoMA

New Cinema cofounder (and Hollywood screenwriter) Becky Johnston recently described her little-seen featurette Sleepless Nights as “an East Village reinvention of the Otto Preminger movie Laura” that plays “fast and loose with the noir detective genre.” The film was screened at MoMA along with a short discussion between Johnston and Maripol on the making of the film and it's lasting cultural almost 40 years later. photographs by Annabel Graham

Read Our Convo With Surf Noir Quartet La Luz's Frontwoman Shana Cleveland On Their Patently Sinister Sound and The Accident That Almost Ended Everything →

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It seems like something dark and catastrophic always happens right before surf-noir quartet La Luz records an album. Before the first album, it was a mass shooting in Seattle. Before the second album, it was a catastrophic car accident on a highway whilst the band was on tour. All of this misfortune, perhaps melded with the dark overcastness of the Pacific Northwest, gives the band a murderous and deliciously baleful sound. Click here to read the full interview.