A new pho­to book sees Wes Ander­son in the everyday

It’s Wes Anderson’s world, and we’re all liv­ing in it. That’s the gist of a new book called ​‘Acci­den­tal­ly Wes Ander­son’, which takes read­ers on a visu­al tour of a colour­ful array of real-world loca­tions which bear an uncan­ny resem­blance to Anderson’s sin­gu­lar aesthetic.

Found­ed in 2017 as a sim­ple Insta­gram project, Acci­den­tal­ly Wes Ander­son has amassed a loy­al fol­low­ing of sharp-eyed loca­tion scouts who, accord­ing to founder Wal­ly Koval, have turned this into a gen­uine­ly glob­al com­mu­ni­ty. With a fore­word by Ander­son him­self, the book is a unique cel­e­bra­tion of one of the world’s most beloved film­mak­ers and a won­der­ful evo­ca­tion of rich­ness and diver­si­ty of the world itself.

“I’ve been a fan of Wes Anderson’s work ever since I first saw Rush­more with my dad many years ago. I start­ed hav­ing a few oppor­tu­ni­ties to trav­el, which I was real­ly lucky to be able to do. My wife Aman­da and I had nev­er real­ly done much trav­el­ling togeth­er, and one of the first trips was made was to Argenti­na and Uruguay.

“We had an amaz­ing time and from there it was like, ​‘Where else could we go?’ So I start­ed see­ing these places online that I thought resem­bled Wes Anderson’s film, and I became very inter­est­ed in what they were and what their sto­ries were. I start­ed com­pil­ing a per­son­al trav­el buck­et list, so to speak, and it real­ly just devel­oped from there.

“We have a num­ber of our own pho­tos which are part of this book, but it’s real­ly become a com­mu­ni­ty effort. To me it’s a com­mu­ni­ty with a cap­i­tal C – it start­ed with Aman­da and me and 20 or 30 peo­ple who were fol­low­ing along, shar­ing places we had been, and it’s grown into a tru­ly glob­al trav­el club.

“There’s so much to see in the world, but it’s impos­si­ble to cov­er every­thing solo, so we’re real­ly grate­ful to every­one who con­tin­ues to par­tic­i­pate. So many dif­fer­ent peo­ple have sub­mit­ted their work – we have some­thing like 180 pho­tog­ra­phers from 50 dif­fer­ent coun­tries in this book alone.

“Wes’ aes­thet­ic has always appealed to me, but it’s also the sto­ries that are inter­twined. There’s a beau­ti­ful sym­me­try to his work – every­thing in its right place – but when you look at the under­ly­ing sto­ries there’s a lot more depth and nar­ra­tive lay­er­ing going on. There’s a very com­plex dynam­ic behind the per­fect facades.

“That’s a use­ful anal­o­gy for pret­ty much any­thing going on in the world, espe­cial­ly the per­for­ma­tive demands of social media, the way we try to present the best ver­sion of our­selves. For this book, we tried to get a mix of real­ly beau­ti­ful sto­ries and ones which are not as beau­ti­ful; it’s the good with the bad. It’s about inves­ti­gat­ing and explor­ing a lit­tle bit fur­ther, beyond the surface.

‘Acci­den­tal­ly Wes Ander­son’ is pub­lished 29 Octo­ber via Trapeze. Check out @accidentallywesanderson for more.