Thérèse #[nn]

Jean-Philippe Stassen's quietly arresting cover for this 1999 Dupuis/Aire Libre album sets the tone perfectly: a young woman named Thérèse gazes out from a green-framed window set into a brick wall, while behind her — or perhaps reflected in the glass — stretches a vast, sun-drenched African savanna beneath a wide open sky. The tension between the confined urban exterior and that sweeping landscape visible through the window is almost poetic, hinting at worlds in collision. A thoughtful, visually inventive work from a creator who handled every aspect of the book himself.