[GROUPE LETTRISTE] [Photograph] Debord, Marc’O, Fillon, Cocteau. n.p.: n.p., n.d. 21 x 15 cm.; B&W photograph on Fujifilm film stock.

Countertype (duplicate) of an original August 1951 photograph showing Marc O’ (Marc Gilbert Guillaumin), Guy Debord, and Jacques Fillon with Jean Cocteau at the artist’s house in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Cocteau made a brief apperance in Isou’s film Traité de Bave et d’Éternité (Venom and Eternity). He supported the avant-garde film and convinced the jury of the Cannes Festival to award it a special “avant-garde prize” created for that very purpose. A young Guy Debord had only joined the Lettrist group 4 months prior, in April 1951, when its members had traveled down to Cannes. The rest, as they say, is History.

Photograph reproduced in Guy Debord, Oeuvres (Paris: Gallimard, 2006), pp. 43.