THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MAISON HEFNER
Artist: Monty Richthofen
Publisher: Sorry Press
Design: WVH
With contributions by: Ski Aggu, Lykke Li, DJ Fuckoff, Maria Hunstig and Jovana Reisinger

For more than a decade, Maison Hefner existed as a living archive: sketch-like handwriting, fragmented poetry, tattoos, images, bodies, and online circulation. In 2024, Monty Richthofen deliberately deleted the Instagram account at 110,000 followers, ending the digital persona as an artistic act. The Life and Death of Maison Hefner turns this ephemeral archive into a physical book: reclaiming narrative, pace, and context from the endless speed of the feed.

The design follows the logic of memory and residue. The book is printed on a wide range of leftover papers from the printer’s archive, each stock carrying a different tone, surface, and tactility, like the many bodies, skin types, and shades Monty has tattooed over the years. We did not treat the paper changes as clean breaks. Texts and images run across them, ignoring the shifts, creating a democratic black-and-white flow with a punk attitude. Graphic layers overlap like tattoos: words on words, images on pages, page numbers bleeding through. Everything is equal, unstable, and alive.

A book that looks like what it is: an archive refusing to stay digital.