In 2016, Valentine Cuny-Le-Callet began a correspondence with Renato McGirth, a young American sentenced to death and imprisoned in Florida. She describes in black and white today over 418 pages their epistolary relationship. A comic strip activist against the lavish death penalty.
Two years ago Valentine Cuny-Le-Callet published in Stock editions a story entitled “The world in five square meters”, in which she recounted four years of exchanges with an American death row inmate, convicted of the murder of a pensioner during a robbery that went wrong.
Today, she comes to present us with a comic book. 400 pages of words, drawings, engravings, which tells the story of his friendship with this man Renaldo McGirth, but also part of his own story, that of a young black American in a society marked by racism and the segregation.
An album that also tells itself, since the making-off, the production of the work is at the very heart of the narration. An album which is also a chilling testimony to prison life and the horror of the death penalty. In short, an album that is all that at the same time, and probably a little more. An album with four hands, signed Valentine Cuny-Le-Callet.
“Perpendicular to the sun” is available from Delcourt editions, in the Encrages collection.
Reportage : Gilles Vignault is a true national monument in Quebec. Now 93 years old, he has made known through his work, his tiny home village, Natashquan, located on the North Shore, nearly 1000 kilometers east of Montreal. In his songs, he brings life to the neighbors and friends of this town of 260 inhabitants, connected to the rest of Quebec by road only 25 years ago. For the past two years, fans of his work have been able to visit the house where he grew up and soak up the atmosphere of his early years. Pascale Guéricolas went there.