You are entering a Wes Anderson movie.

Wes Ander­son films are char­ac­ter­ized by their extra­or­di­nary char­ac­ters, by its turns of plot that leave us amazed and an irre­press­ible, and by its visu­al cre­ative dri­ve. The com­po­si­tion of images in Anderson’s films has a lot to do with sym­me­try, a sym­me­try that gives things, objects, hous­es and land­scapes a sig­nif­i­cance that they don’t actu­al­ly have. This dis­crep­an­cy irri­tates, dis­turbs and dis­rupts us. And that’s a good part of the plea­sure we get when we see a Wes Ander­son movie.

Now the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, author, Insta­gram­mer, what­ev­er his pro­fes­sion is, Wal­ly Koval has vis­it­ed loca­tions for films like Grand Budapest Hotel and … No, he has­n’t. Dif­fer­ent: Wal­ly Koval shares pho­tos of places on his Insta­gram chan­nel @accidentallywesanderson that look like they came from a fic­tion­al, yet to be shot Wes Ander­son film. His chan­nel now has 1.4 mil­lion sub­scribers. And now Wal­ly Koval has made a book out of it, which was pub­lished by DuMont Ver­lag. It’s kind of like a trav­el guide. A world Wes Ander­son trav­el guide. In addi­tion, a very prac­ti­cal one, with maps, hints and things worth know­ing about all the places. I expect that after the pan­dem­ic, a stream of world trav­el­ers will go out and vis­it the places one after the oth­er.

One of the fas­ci­nat­ing places that can be found in the book and that I would like to go to tomor­row is, for exam­ple, a fire watch tow­er in the Catskill Moun­tains in the USA. I recent­ly saw a tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary about such fire watch tow­ers. They were there to detect the slight­est pres­ence of smoke over the Amer­i­can forests. In some of these tow­ers you can sup­pos­ed­ly stay the night. But some of them also burned down.

To give an exam­ple from Ger­many: The fact that I was pre­vi­ous­ly unfa­mil­iar with the Nibelun­gen Bridge over the Rhine and the asso­ci­at­ed Nibelun­gen Tow­er in Worms is a crim­i­nal omis­sion. The Nibelun­gen Bridge and the Nibelun­gen Tow­er are pret­ty much the most eclec­tic ensem­ble of build­ings I’ve come across. There is a his­toric clock tow­er that is sup­posed to look as if it came from the Mid­dle Ages, and the ugli­est 1950s bridge leads through this clock tow­er. A very strange com­bi­na­tion. The tow­er has been a boy scout hos­tel since 1976.

Wes Ander­son says of Koval’s book: „I now under­stand what it means to hap­pen to be me.”

Wal­ly Koval: Acci­den­tal­ly Wes Ander­son. Places like from “Grand Budapest Hotel” and oth­er films by the direc­tor. With a fore­word by Wes Ander­son. DuMont pub­lish­ing house. 28 € (D). 368 pages.