You could never characterize the painstakingly arch visual style of film director Wes Anderson as art imitating life. It’s more like art redecorating life.
Nevertheless, there are places in the real world—a small-town post office decorated with storybook murals, say, or a pink 19th-century hotel as trim and tidy as a dollhouse—where you might feel as though you’ve wandered into lost footage from Moonrise Kingdom (2012) or The Darjeeling Limited (2007) or The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).
“You know it when you see it,” writes Wally Koval in his new book, Accidentally Wes Anderson, “whether it’s the symmetrical lines, pastel hues . . . or something idiosyncratic and beautiful that you can and cannot describe at once.”
The book (out this month from Little, Brown and Company) is a print version of the popular @AccidentallyWesAnderson Instagram account, which the Brooklyn-based Koval started in 2017 as a showcase for Anderson-esque, just-so images submitted by followers, who now number over a million.
The handsome, 368-page book gathers photos showing scores of places across all seven continents (Antarctica is represented by a red-doored wooden shed flanked by penguins with an iceberg in the background; Bill Murray’s Steve Zissou would not look out of place). Accompanying text supplies potted histories, trivia, and further context about each locale depicted.
More than an homage to the director, the book is intended as a source of travel inspiration and an “invitation to look for the story behind every facade,” according to Koval’s introduction.
The collection has already sparked the wanderlust of at least one reader: the actual Wes Anderson. “There must be about 200 locations here,” the director writes in the book’s foreword, “which should keep me busy for several decades, but I plan not to let any of these experiences escape me, especially the Croatian pancakes stand.”
Below, you’ll find a selection of photos from the book, along with brief descriptions of where the shots were captured.
Set for release from Little, Brown and Company on October 20, 2020, Accidentally Wes Anderson by Wally Koval is available for preorder now.
