The publication follows
30 ans de Pourriture Noble and
40 ans de Pourriture Noble, earlier stages of an archive conceived as a continuous work in progress.
First developed as a website and later as an interactive DVD, the project has continued to evolve and expand over the years, enriched by the discovery of new and previously unseen material.
50 ans de Pourriture Noble brings this ever-growing archive together in its most extensive form to date.
Founded by Bruno Richard and
Pascal Doury,
ESDS emerged alongside the punk explosion and the radical graphic experiments of the late 1970s. From the outset, the publication rejected conventional distinctions between art, illustration, comics, pornography and the artist's book. Richard's raw, obsessive and often violent imagery collided with Doury's more delicate, deceptively innocent visual language, sometimes merging in works created together. Over the following decades,
Elles Sont de Sortie became an extraordinary and constantly mutating body of work: graphzines, books, drawings, paintings, photographs, collages and printed matter produced in ever-changing formats and often in tiny editions.
Bruno Richard (born 1956 in Curepipe, Mauritius) is a French artist, illustrator and graphic designer. Co-founder with
Pascal Doury of the graphzine
Elles sont de sortie (ESDS) in the 1970s, he is one of the leading figures of the French punk and underground movements, known the world over.