Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Ed Pien, Fatine-Violette Sabiri, Mallory Lowe Mpoka
Recent news has brought us three artist’s books rooted in a search for identity grounded in duality, encounter, and the passage of memory.
Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Ed Pien, Fatine-Violette Sabiri
[Summer 2025] Editorial by Jacques Doyon The three artist books featured in this issue were founded on a quest for identity rooted in duality, encounter, and memory. They bear testament to a search for self, built from life stories, diasporic links, transmission of heritages. Photographic portraits and self-portraits are central to these illustrated narratives that […]
Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon
Thematic presentation for Ciel variable 128: Change of Scene.
Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
Editorial by Jacques Doyon for Ciel variable no. 128, on the idea of a change of scene.
Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon
The works gathered in this thematic dossier tell the story of women’s affirmation and contributions in various contexts: decolonization, resistance to Islamic fundamentalism and the reconsideration of traditional gamesmanship.
Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
Hieratic portraits, solemn and emblematic of women in solidarity, standing tall and fighting. Figures of transmission and resistance: sisters, fighters, queens, attacking gamesmanship, fighting for a change in the actual rules of power.
Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Bertrand Carrière, Éric Tabuchi, Nelly Monnier, Suzanne Lafont
[Winter 2024] By Jacques Doyon Cities are born from clusters of structures that provide shelter for human life and activities. Through them flow grids of thoroughfares that form patterns of movement and exchange. That’s what an urban agglomeration is: a dense knot, large or small, placed at a certain point in a rhizomatic lattice that […]
Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Elisapie Isaac, Marie-Carole Noël
[Winter 2024] An interview by Jacques Doyon [Excerpt] [ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS ] [ Complete article, in digital version, available here: Marie-Carole Noël / Elisapie Isaac, Derrière chaque image, une histoire — Jacques Doyon ]
Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Elisapie Isaac, Marie-Carole Noël
[Winter 2024] Marie-Carole Noël and Elisapie Isaac, Derrière chaque image, une histoire An interview by Jacques Doyon [Excerpt] The fascinating documentary Derrière chaque image, une histoire, broadcast during the National Day for Truth and Reconcilation,1 highlights projects aimed at recovering the names of Inuit and Indigenous people who, in colonial history – our history – […]
Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Nicolas Baier
[Fall 2023] [Excerpt] An Almost Spontaneous Appearance of the Machine in the World An interview by Jacques Doyon On the occasion of Nicolas Baier’s major exhibition held in Montreal in early 2023,1 we sat down with him to talk about its main themes. Jacques Doyon: It seems appropriate to start with the video titled Vases […]
Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Adad Hannah, Nicolas Baier, Thomas Demand
[Fall 2023] By Jacques Doyon These are images that catch our attention and intensify our gaze. What they show us is clear and precise, and yet there is something we can’t place, something that encourages us to look more closely and to question the context of their production. In Nicolas Baier’s work, it is the […]
Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Evergon, Michèle Pearson Clarke, Raymonde April
[Summer 2023] By Jacques Doyon Theatres of the Intimate, the major exhibition of Evergon’s work at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, mea- sures the scope of an approach that celebrates the gay body and homosexual desire. Throughout his body of work, Evergon deploys a highly personal theatre of intimate relationships, desires, and impulses […]
Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Anne-Marie Proulx, Jacynthe Carrier
[Winter 2023] Jacynthe Carrier and Anne-Marie Proulx, Photography, care and community An interview by Jacques Doyon [Excerpt] Jacynthe Carrier and Anne-Marie Proulx, co directors of VU, centre de diffusion et de production de la photographie since 2015, share a community spirit that is manifested in how they have worked together in the roles of executive […]
Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Justine Kurland, Pierre Blache
[Fall 2022] By Jacques Doyon Walking in the city, travelling down country roads, discovering the country, exploring foreign capitals – in short, getting moving – we confront different perspectives, contextualize or a rm our values, and take the measure of the world we live in. Such mobility, such constant travels, are the basis for the […]
Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Dana Claxton, Jeff Thomas, Meryl McMaster
[Summer 2022] By Jacques Doyon Indigenous peoples have been confined to reservations, cut off from their ancestral lands, subjected to forced assimilation in schools, and had their status denied as Métis or urban residents. They have been forbidden to display the signs of their cultures and were long condemned to invisibility. But the situation is […]
Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, William E. Ewing | Artists: Alejandro Cartagena, Francesco Zizola, Olivier Christinat
[Winter 2022] An interview by Jacques Doyon [Excerpt] Author, exhibition curator, professor, and longtime director of the Musée de l’Élysée (1996– 2010), in Lausanne, William A. Ewing began his career in Montreal; he was the founder of Optica, which he directed from 1972 to 1977. Ewing has been exploring the field of photography for some […]
Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2022] Par Jacques Doyon The title might seem paradoxical, as the artists brought together for this issue’s thematic section are all defenders and lovers of nature and spend a good deal of time in it. But what their works reveal is a “naturality” thoroughly permeated by human activity and entirely shaped by it, implying […]
Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2021] By Jacques Doyon The thematic section in this issue presents three recent exhibitions that show how photography can actively contribute to shaping a vision of the world. The first, which features quantity and diversity of images, indicates how an accumulation of points of view and subjects addressed makes it possible to override the […]
Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Été 2021] By Jacques Doyon This issue features three artists, with three aesthetic positionings, who share an ironic distancing, sometimes barely perceptible, from themselves and from the world in which they live. One of them, taking a scholarly stance, constructs himself by literally embodying bits of art history; the second, in a more narrative vein, […]
Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2021] By Jacques Doyon What do the most distant, wild, silent landscapes tell us? How do landscapes of our childhood, those that awoke us to the world, shape us? What reflections of our own future do we find in the chaos of urban sites? Landscapes are like mirrors, utterly shaped by human presence. The […]
Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2020] By Jacques Doyon I’m writing this editorial at a time when, to general surprise, paralysis of a significant portion of human activity is gradually spreading across the globe (with some 2.5 billion people in confinement right now). Suddenly, the unthinkable has happened. The immutable rumble of economic activity spurred on by the desire […]
Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Portfolios
Authors: Gisele Amantea, Jacques Doyon | Artists: Gisele Amantea
[Winter 2020] An interview by Jacques Doyon Jacques Doyon: What is the origin of the work Aleppo, Syria December 17, 2016? How did the idea emerge? Why Syria? And what prompted you to work from an existing image of a disaster? Gisele Amantea: I was invited by curator Emily Falvey to participate in the group […]
Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2020] In the thematic section of this issue, we take a look at collective action in society. Against a background of social conflict and war, the artists evoke the impact of collective actions on the common good by scrutinizing multitudes of media images that help to form our relationship with the world. Through re-examination […]
Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Entrevues, Interviews
Authors: Audrey Genois, Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2019] An interview by Jacques Doyon Audrey Genois has been the executive director of MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image (formerly Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal) since 2016. She was assistant curator at the Galerie de l’UQAM from 2002 to 2016. Over fifteen years, she organized more than sixty exhibitions and ten national […]
Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2019] By Jacques Doyon The artists brought together in this issue’s thematic section explore different issues related to the boundaries of sexual identity and their transgression. Personas, transvestism, and role mutations are core to these artists’ approaches, as they address various issues fundamental to establishing a society based on inclusion rather than on narrow […]
Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, María Wills Londoño
October 9, 2019 [originally published in CV113 in Summer 2019] — María Wills Londoño (Colombia) is a researcher and exhibition curator whose principal areas of expertise are the unstable nature of the contemporary image and innovative points of view of the urban face of Latin America…
Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2019] By Jacques Doyon Three recent exhibitions, by two artists and one collector, offer a rare look at the act of collecting. The thematic section in this issue features different types of collections of images, all of which involve a rereading, a recontextualization: highlighting a way of working that traverses and structures an artist’s […]
Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2019] By Jacques Doyon From the manipulation of light (through decomposition, combination of layers, or diffraction effects) to work on the supporting medium (film, photographic paper, walls) to searching out pictorial compositions on city streets, a space of exploration opens up for photography around the various manifestations of colour. The result is images that […]
Ciel variable 110 - MIGRATION | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Louise Déry
May 10, 2022 [originally published in CV110 in Fall 2018 ] — An interview by Jacques Doyon. Louise Déry holds a PhD in art history and has been director of the Galerie de l’UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal) since 1997; previously, she was director of the Musée régional de Rimouski and curator of contemporary art at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts…
Ciel variable 110 - MIGRATION | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2018] By Jacques Doyon More than thresholds, borders have become a kind of non-place – extra-national zones – where migrants’ identities and statuses are examined and held in suspension for periods that are increasingly long and undetermined. In this issue, we examine certain aspects of the crossing of borders with works that explore how […]
Ciel variable 109 - REVISIT | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
The works brought together in this issue look back at events in relatively recent history that have reverberated to the present day. These are prolific works, with multiple iterations, embodied in artistic forms and processes that reflect the complexity of their subjects: the mobility of fragments of the Berlin Wall, the exhibition at the Christian […]
Ciel variable 108 - GOING PUBLIC | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2018] By Jacques Doyon This issue’s thematic section presents works that come from a wide variety of places and times, but all are marked by the notion of public visibility. These three bodies of work cover a wide spectrum of what defines the public space for artistic expression, ranging from the concrete civic and […]
Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2017 ] — Editorial of Ciel variable 105 – Ruins
Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Alain Lefort, Denis Farley, Jocelyn Philibert
Each series of images in this issue presents, in a way, work on a motif – a live view of the landscape, in the tradition of landscape painters. Capturing the infinite variations of trees, icebergs, or clouds under different conditions certainly testifies to an interest in nature, but perhaps even more in how it is […]
Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Interviews
Authors: Hélène Samson, Jacques Doyon | Artists: William Notman
March 18, 2020 [originally published in CV105 in Winter 2017] — Hélène Samson has been the curator of the photography collection at the McCord Museum since 2006. She is interested in collecting vernacular Canadian photographs and updating nineteenth-century photographic archives…
Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Claire Beaugrand-Champagne, Clara Gutsche, David Miller, Gabor Szilasi, Michel Campeau, Miki Gingras, Patrick Dionne, Robert Walker, Roger Charbonneau
[Winter 2017] Over the years, many photographers have explored Montreal and its neighbourhoods. Their images have captured portraits of residents, the colour and composition of the streets and commercial arteries, and the mixture of cultures that contribute to the quality and diversity of a city, as well as the commitment of residents who create the […]
Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2017] It is particularly interesting to present the series of images that Robert Walker has made on the subject of the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhood – where he was born and currently lives – in light of the festivities for Montreal’s 375th anniversary. The focus of these celebrations – optimistic and perhaps a bit facile – […]
Ciel variable 104 - FROM ANOTHER ANGLE | Essays, Interviews
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade, Jacques Doyon
March 3, 2020 [originally published in CV104 in Fall 2016] — The Edge of the Earth focuses on contributions by various artists and journalists to the recognition and consideration of issues linked to climate change, with a particular emphasis on the challenges posed by recognition of the central role played by humans in the disruption of their environment in what is now known as the Anthropocene Era.
Ciel variable 104 - FROM ANOTHER ANGLE | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Marisa Portolese, Yoanis Menge
[Fall 2016] With great sensitivity and remarkable image quality, the works brought together in this section offer a renewed gaze at discredited realities and experiences. They do this by showing us people in their living environments. And yet, it is not individuals that these works offer as much as a certain order of representation, certain […]
Ciel variable 104 - FROM ANOTHER ANGLE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Marisa Portolese, Yoanis Menge
[Fall 2016] The works in this issue’s thematic section are anchored in realities diametrically opposed to each other – the seal hunt, social marginality, and representation of women – and are from different times. These works nevertheless come together in their challenging of prejudices and dominant thought systems. In fact, each proposes to portray people […]
Ciel variable 103 - NATURE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Geneviève Chevalier, Isabelle Hayeur, Jessica Auer
[Spring/Summer 2016] There are places where nature’s presence is more intensely felt, where the question of the city’s interrelations with its natural environment emerges more spontaneously. Certain circumstances are also conducive to raising such reflections – among them, sense of unfamiliarity experienced during a stay abroad, obvious deterioration in the equilibrium or beauty of a […]
Ciel variable 102 - FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Alejandro Cartagena, Julian Germain, Raymonde April
[Winter 2016] Globalization is making us more aware of the realities of the entire planet through news, visits, and business travel. In addition, urbanization and consumer markets are tending to bring cultures and lifestyles ever closer to each other. Even so, and fortunately, diversity and differences remain. What is more, the most radical forms […]
Ciel variable 102 - FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Alejandro Cartagena, Julian Germain, Raymonde April
[Winter 2016] What can hold things together and forge intersections in universes as different as the ones gathered in these pages, if it is not that they address a few aspects of our common condition that is increasingly shaped by the current path of globalization? The opening of borders in the contemporary era, inaugurated […]
Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
Is fantasizing always diametrically opposed to the truth? Or does it tend to become an inherent component of reality – to blend with it, be superimposed on it – to the point that the two shape each other? The recent Bugingo affair – involving a Montreal journalist who apparently invented a series of facts and […]
Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Adad Hannah, Althea Thauberger, Chuck Samuels, Denys Arcand
Appropriating visual artworks, as one interprets the works in a repertoire: here, a sculpture by Rodin, self-portraits of famous photographers, and a play whose writing is attributed, as part of the fiction, to an author of another era. Judging that, among all the works that exist, these ones still resonate sufficiently in the eyes and […]
Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
Publishing a contemporary art magazine specializing in photography in 2015 is more relevant than ever. Simply think of all the magazines, galleries, exhibition centres, and events (Mois de la photo and photographic encounters of all kinds) that exist and are being created all over the world around the photographic image. Of course, the time has […]
Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Vincent Lafrance
November 18, 2015 [originally published Winter 2015] — Vincent Lafrance’s work is permeated with the idea of the simulacrum – perception and its faults. Playing with photographic virtuosity and with randomness, he composes visual illusions with traditional photographic means. His body of videographic work uses language as a confusing effect; he produces fictions that fluidly meander between …
Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
We are pleased to present in this issue the first thematic section put together by Alexis Desgagnés in his new position as associate editor of the magazine. The section, bearing on the notion of habitat, juxtaposes recent works by photographers Normand Rajotte and Stephen Gill, each of whom stands out for a field practice adapted […]
Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Henri Venne, Jacinthe Lessard-L., Jon Knowles, Lorna Bauer, Thomas Ruff
Each in its way, the works in this issue’s portfolio speak of photography and analogue images by inscribing them in other artistic media (digital simulation, film, video, sculpture, painting). The imprint of light is thus materialized in abstract, simplified forms that multiply the images’ referential registers while relativizing the privileged link between photography and the […]
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Martha Langford | Artists: Clifford Owens
September 5, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — Martha Langford is the research chair and director of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art and a professor of art history at Concordia University in Montreal. Her books on photography include Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums (2001); Scissors, Paper, Stone: Expressions of Memory in Contemporary Photographic Art (2007)…
Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Christian Tagliavini, Gabriel Coutu-Dumont, Pierre Gonnord
What, in fact, could the people (gypsies, miners, aristocrats, models, night owls, and others) gathered here in portraits have in common but the dignity conferred upon them by the photographers who took their picture? These artists’ approaches also share crossreferences, as well as photographic and pictorial skills displayed in chiaroscuros, framings, poses, textures and drapings […]
Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Luc Courchesne | Artists: Luc Courchesne
June 13, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — Luc Courchesne is a digital arts pioneer. From interactive portraits to immersive experience systems, he has created innovative and engaging works that have earned him prestigious awards such as the Grand Prize of the ICC Biennale in Tokyo in 1997 and the Award of Distinction at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, in 1999…
Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Jacynthe Carrier, Kim Waldron, Marisa Portolese
The thematic section of this issue presents recent works by three Montreal artists from the perspective of the performative dimension of their images. In these works, the artists stage bodies in situations of intimacy, intrusive proximity, or confrontation with their own fears, to bring to light how loved ones, strangers, and even animals help to […]
Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Paul Wombell
April 4, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — You have articulated the theme of Le Mois de la photo à Montreal around the title Drone: The Automated Image, and you have written, “The camera is a sophisticated instrument with its own laws and its own agency” and “The artists raise an important question: do cameras have a life of their own?” Can you elaborate on the implications of these statements? …
Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
The thematic section CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC examines some of the issues related to the digital regime of images and their circulation on networks. It explores the many correspondences and reciprocities that are being woven between concrete spaces and various technological devices, whether portable (smartphones, applications of all types, geolocation instruments) or anchored in […]
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Interviews
Authors: Bonnie Rubenstein, Jacques Doyon | Artists: Erik Kessels
January 31, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — Bonnie Rubenstein has been a director at CONTACT since 2002, and the festival’s artistic director Originally from Toronto, she holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. As curatorial assistant for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, she worked on several groundbreaking exhibitions.
Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Dominique Auerbacher, Nicolas Baier
[Spring/summer 2013] In this issue, we return to the question of public art, a subject we previously addressed in issues 82 and 90. The artworks chosen for this portfolio stand out for the acuity with which their context for integration has been managed. Each of these artworks, in its way, offers an exemplary response to […]
Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
This issue of Ciel variable includes a fifty-page special section on the appropriation by visual artists of questions related to forensic evidence. Organized by guest editor Vincent Lavoie, professor of art history and photography at UQAM, this issue continues in the spirit of some of our previous issues focusing on specific aspects of photographic studies […]
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Stephen Bulger
September 5, 2017 [originally published in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Stephen Bulger studied at Ryerson University in Toronto. He was the founding director of the Ryerson Gallery, where he managed over thirty exhibitions. in 1994, he opened the Stephen Bulger gallery to exhibit and sell contemporary and historical photographs, with a special emphasis on the documentary tradition and Canadian historical photographs.
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Andreas Rutkauskas, Eamon Mac Mahon, Thomas Kneubühler
Today, the North is making economic headlines, as it has become a new Eldorado for societies stalked by the dream of continual growth. This territory – homeland to First Nations, an ecosystem vital to the entire continent, and a vast pool of natural resources – is nevertheless mostly unknown to the general public. National mythology […]
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Sébastien Hudon | Artists: Albert Dumouchel, Jean-Onésime Legault, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Sydney Jack Hayward
June 12, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — Now the artistic director of La Bande Vidéo, Sébastien Hudon has been, in turn, a bookseller, an author, a critic, and an independent curator. He was nominated for the young curator of the year award at the first agac gala following his presentation of two successive exhibitions mounted in 2010 and 2011 at Maison Hamel-Bruneau, in Quebec City: “Concerto en bleu majeur,” on the links between the visual arts and music, and …
Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Edward Burtynsky, Jacky Georges Lafargue, Louis Couturier
From Alberta to Azerbaijan, from Resolute Bay to Mumbai, via Oran, Johannesburg, Chittagong, Shanghai, and Tucson, this issue presents images of an industrious, prosperous world that has its (un)fair share of dysfunctions and aberrations. In all of these images, the documentary component, embodied within very different aesthetic strategies, attests to and interprets various facets of […]
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon
April 3, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: JR, Miki Gingras, Patrick Dionne
Bringing to the walls and façades of cities the oversized faces of their inhabitants, reappropriating the urban space to advertise a presence and affirm an identity – these are the concerns that lie at the heart of the projects that we present in this issue. As a collaborative tool, photography becomes the instrument of a […]
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Marie-Josée Jean
January 24, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — Marie-Josée Jean became director of VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine in 2002, after organizing the sixth and seventh presentations of Mois de la Photo à Montréal. For the last ten years, her research has focused on the theory and practice of image-based and conceptual art. For VOX, she has organized exhibitions by John Baldessari, Bill Vazan, Marcel Duchamp, Maria Eichorn, …
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Ewa Monika Zebrowski, Lynne Cohen, Sylvie Readman
[Fall 2011] Being attentive to the environments that one passes through. All these passageways, these enigmatic and inhospitable spaces: entrance halls, waiting rooms, and showrooms with incongruous décors, laboratory rooms with indecipherable functions. All these buildings that one sees on urban access roads, some of them abandoned, that compose a purely functional environment, with no […]
Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Interviews
Authors: Anne-Marie Ninacs, Jacques Doyon
October 27, 2016 [originally published in Spring 2011] — Anne-Marie Ninacs was the guest curator for the Mois de la Photo à Montréal 2011, with the theme Lucidity: Inward Views. From 2002 to 2006, Ninacs was the curator of contemporary art at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, where she organized the exhibitions Massimo Guerrera. Darboral, L’emploi du temps, Avancer dans le brouillard, and Chimère/Shimmer.
Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: JJ Levine, Martin Schoeller, Tony Fouhse
[Spring/Summer 2011] In this issue, queers, media darlings, Aboriginals, female bodybuilders, and crack addicts form a highly heterogeneous portrait gallery that challenges our ideas about identity. These unsettling images reveal unexpected strengths or vulnerabilities, leading us to re-evaluate our perceptions. They captivate us, enticing us to stop and study a series of details that prove […]
Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Alain Pratte, Chuck Samuels, Michel Campeau, Yan Giguère
[Winter 2011] The works presented in this issue are characterized by the accumulation of a large number of images and the creation of series that may be systematic, or may be intuitive and fragmentary. In some of these works we can discern an iterative mode that operates in the formal arrangement, the object of investigation, […]
Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2010] by Jacques Doyon MoMA’s major retrospective of the work of Marina Abramović marks museum institutions’ full recognition of the field of performance. In a way, this exhibition is the logical outcome of a movement of reactualization of historic performances that has been underway for more than a decade and to which Abramowic has […]
Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2010] by Jacques Doyon This issue looks at the representation of conflicts and wars. Whether they are distant battles, terrorist attacks, or riots taking place in the heart of our cities, their communication to the public is often dominated by spectacularization and slanted views. The artists whose works brought together here address situations that […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Gabor Szilasi
[Spring 2010] Over the years, Gabor Szilasi has assembled a remarkable portrait of Quebecers as a community and of the Montreal urban landscape that earned him the Prix Borduas in 2009. Perhaps it took a com- pletely new eye to tease into visibility the multiple fibres woven into Quebec society. Szilasi’s portraits form a major […]
Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2010] by Jacques Doyon This issue presents portraits of people from all walks of life, most of them photographed in their interiors. There are also views of private places filled with things – décor, furniture – that testify to a presence. It is possible to think that individuality, self-representation, is manifested in a person’s […]
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Christian Boltanski, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Michael Snow, Ron Terada
[Fall 2009] by Jacques Doyon What do the images in a magazine say? What is revealed by the reiteration of certain types of images – as well as their format, positioning, and grouping? Photographs are central to the definition of magazines, often equal in importance to textual content. For the image, the magazine goes beyond […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Interviews
Authors: Gaëlle Morel, Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2009] Gaëlle Morel, guest curator for Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal 2009, is a member of the board of directors of the Société française de photographie and of the editorial committee of Études photographiques. She has published Le photoreportage d’auteur. L’institution culturelle de la photographie en France depuis les années 1970 (Paris: […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Adad Hannah, Alexandre Castonguay, Carlos & Jason Sanchez, Christophe Beauregard, Clara Gutsche, Denis Farley, Éric Tabuchi, Florian Böhm, Geneviève Cadieux, Isabelle Hayeur, Jessica Auer, Josée Pedneault, Marie-Jeanne Musiol, Max Wright, Neil Budzinski, Raymonde April, Roberto Pellegrinuzzi, Ron Terada, Suzanne Opton
[Summer 2009] by Jacques Doyon For several decades, contemporary art has been on display in the public spaces of Quebec’s urban areas, thanks to the creation of public art programs. Photography was long excluded from these programs, and even today it has limited visibility. Some initiatives have been undertaken in recent years, however, that stand […]
Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2009] by Jacques Doyon This issue offers some preliminary observations on the presence of art photography in urban public art. When we think of “public art,” the governmental public art programs in effect in Quebec and Montreal for several decades immediately spring to mind. Photography, however, has not been well represented in these programs. […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Antoni Muntadas
[Spring 2009] The internationally known artist Antoni Muntadas will present a new exhibition titled The Construction of Fear at Galerie SBC art contemporain in Montreal, from 28 February to 18 April 2009. Muntadas is interested in social, political, and communications issues, the relationship between public and private space within social frameworks, and the ways that channels […]
Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2009] by Jacques Doyon In this issue, we bring together images testifying to the impacts of accelerated modernization in today’s China. The photographers who made them have varying degrees of professional experience linked to commissions for the media, corporations, or advertising. They have nevertheless cultivated a personal vision and produced photographic series based on […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Angela Grauerholz
[Fall 2008] by Jacques Doyon Jacques Doyon : Over the course of a photographic practice spanning more than twenty years, you have shown consistent interest in the archival aspects of images and the architecture of their storage and display. You’ve also produced artist’s books and installations reflecting on museum practices. In 2000, you organized an […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
by Jacques Doyon The image bank is an archive structured by selection, indexing, and thematic cross-referencing procedures that determine how it is used. Artists appropriate this mechanism to explore the issues in visual culture and the contemporary future of the “virtual museum” prefigured by Malraux. They plead fundamentally for an attentive reading of images and […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Entrevues, Interviews
Authors: Chantal Pontbriand, Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2008] For thirty years, Chantal Pontbriand has been the guiding light of the magazine Parachute. From the beginning, she positioned it among the internationally significant magazines. In parallel with its publishing activities, the magazine organized a series of events and conferences that were just as notable. In April 2007, Parachute announced a suspension of […]
Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2008] by Jacques Doyon Photographing the street, over time, to record the evolution of the city and how it is used is a strategy that remains current. In these pages, it reveals the survival of small businesses in the era of globalization of markets, it allows us to follow the radical transformation of a […]
Ciel variable 78 - COLLECTING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2008] To complement the first part of our look back at the first twenty years of the magazine, published in our last issue, we want here to emphasize two relatively obscure aspects of our history. The first one is the contribution of photographers to the very first version of the magazine, when its mandate […]
Ciel variable 78 - COLLECTING PHOTOGRAPHY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2008] by Jacques Doyon Photography is becoming an increasingly important component of private collections. Recognition of the wealth and diversity of the photographic tradition, as well as a significant rise in the value of photographs on the art market, have accompanied this evolution. That is why we have chosen, for this issue, to highlight collections […]
Ciel variable 77 – CULTURAL TOURISM | Essays
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2007] by Jacques Doyon This is the first part of our review of twenty years of Ciel variable. It offers an overview of the metamorphoses that the magazine has had over the years as photographic practices evolved, their field of application broadened, they were increasingly recognized by the art world, and their institutional environment […]
Ciel variable 77 – CULTURAL TOURISM | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2007] by Jacques Doyon Ciel variable is twenty years old! Over the years, the magazine has undergone several metamorphoses in order to better reflect the evolution in photographic practice, the broadening of its field of application, its recognition by the art world, and changes in its institutional environment. As the only bilingual photography magazine […]
Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Joan Fontcuberta
[Summer 2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Joan Fontctuberta’s latest body of work, Datascape, is composed of two series: Orogenesis and Googlegrams. The first series was produced with software intended to produce photorealistic perspectives from topographical maps and […]
Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2007] by Jacques Doyon The works presented in this issue form conceptual mappings of territories in the midst of redefinition: the Internet, the natural environment, and circulation hubs. There is no cartography in the literal sense here; rather, these metaphorical mappings use the tools of cartography for investigations and approaches that examine our relationship […]
Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2006-2007] by Jacques Doyon It is not surprising that the world of advertising has become an object of investigation and aesthetic appropriation for contemporary artists. Advertising has an important place in Western culture. It is omnipresent in the urban environment, and it literally inundates the communications media, in which it rivals news, entertainment, and […]
Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2006] by Jacques Doyon The images brought together in this issue fall under the rubric of the “staged” photography. They are inscribed within a current that has flowed throughout the history of photography, as the exhibition Acting the Part: Photography as Theatre, currently on at the National Gallery of Canada, brilliantly demonstrates. These practices […]
Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2006] by Jacques Doyon Instructions: define a field of operations that is compatible with the camera’s field, determine the procedures for choosing objects and the type of actions to produce, decide on a duration, insert a body into the recording field, perform the planned manipulations or interactions, and then re-evaluate the results of the […]
Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2006] by Jacques Doyon In this issue, we feature works that, in their profusion and scope, offer a glimpse at the condition of the world as it is manifested and revealed through the mechanisms for fabrication and circulation of images. These image systems are of different dimensions, ranging from identity as it is defined […]
Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2005-2006] by Jacques Doyon Seeing better, seeing farther; disrupting the representation, dissolving it: these approaches seem contradictory. Yet, paradoxically, they hew to a single frontier: that of the visible and representable, that of the limit of our capacity to see and our perceptual expectations. They meet in a common exploration of light as a […]
Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2005] by Jacques Doyon This issue is about our ways of apprehending, representing, and acting in the contemporary city. The works presented here are all characterized by the inclusion within the images of a multiplicity of points of view and a distinct process of observation. They examine different aspects of an urbanity that is […]
Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2005] by Jacques Doyon The works in this issue fall under the sign of things that are beyond comprehension. The list of catastrophic events that have left bitter traces on our democratic ideals in the last half-century is long. Current events dealt with in contemporary visual arts bring to mind some of these unimaginable […]
Ciel variable 66B - RAYMONDE APRIL | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Raymonde April
[Spring 2005] by Jacques Doyon This issue of CV ciel variable is extraordinary in more than one way. Our portfolio pages are devoted exclusively to presenting a work that we feel is particularly important, Reading Room for the Working Artist, Angela Grauerholz’s most recent piece. This issue also includes an insert, produced in collaboration with […]
Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Angela Grauerholz
[Spring 2005] by Jacques Doyon This issue of CV ciel variable is extraordinary in more than one way. Our portfolio pages are devoted exclusively to presenting a work that we feel is particularly important, Reading Room for the Working Artist, Angela Grauerholz’s most recent piece. This issue also includes an insert, produced in collaboration with […]
Ciel variable 65 - PORTRAITS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2004] by Jacques Doyon This issue contains examples of current portrait practices that can be associated with various sub-categories of the genre: group of young people posing in the studio, series of self-portraits inspired by a play on the mask, the figure of the artist in the presence of his working materials. As different […]
Ciel variable 64 - TABLEAUX | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2004] by Jacques Doyon The optical devices, the renderings of light and perspectives, and the compositional modes inherited from the pictorial tradition form, even today, one of the foundations of our modes of representation, including for media based on the recording of the real and on digitization. The search for artistic legitimacy has long […]
Ciel variable 63 - PERSONA | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2004] by Jacques Doyon The works brought together in this issue offer a variety of avenues for understanding the ways in which the mise en scène of the self is created in response to the other and how this representation is received. Their grounds of exploration are diametrically opposed: from aristocratic dandyism to the […]
Ciel variable 62 - TERRITORY | IDENTITY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2003] by Jacques Doyon Territory is one of the bases of identity. We are made of the places where we grow up and the communities into which we integrate ourselves, whether they are local or national, professional, personal, or linked to daily life. Each dimension of our pluralistic identities is materialized in concrete spaces, […]
Ciel variable 61 - MODERNE | VERNACULAIRE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Patrick Altman, Vid Ingelevics
[Summer 2003] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Gallery 44, Toronto du 6 février au 8 mars 2003
Ciel variable 61 - MODERNE | VERNACULAIRE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2003] by Jacques Doyon In this issue, we delve into modern and vernacular architecture in countries, regions, and cities on the margins of the industrialized West. Architecture, the landscape, and the city are captured in a distanced way. No ethnographic inquiry, no deep documentary research, few interior photographs; instead, the emphasis is on façades […]
Ciel variable 60 - VISION | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2003] by Jacques Doyon The artworks presented in this issue make manifest the constraints intrinsic to the tools of vision. They inscribe in the image itself traces of the prostheses, framings, and postures inherent to the photographic act, and in opposition to the referential consensus they offer an exploration of the conditions of the […]
Ciel variable 59 - ARCHIVES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2002] by Jacques Doyon This issue features the works of contemporary artists whose work involves the photographic archive. Because of its documentary aspect, photography was put to use in archives early and became an important component. In fact, it was this aspect that long kept photography from being recognized by the art world. Paradoxically, […]
Ciel variable 58 - NUDES AND PORTRAITS | Book Reviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Mireille Loup, Raymonde April
[Summer 2002] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Marc Trivier, Le paradis perdu Yves Gevaert éditeur et le Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain, Bruxelles, 2001, 192 p. Raymonde April, L’eau renversée avec Patrick Coutu, Charles Guilbert, Serge Murphy, […]
Ciel variable 58 - NUDES AND PORTRAITS | Book Reviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2002] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Éditions du Regard, Paris, 2002, 200 p., 100 illustrations
Ciel variable 58 - NUDES AND PORTRAITS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Summer 2002] by Jacques Doyon Evergon, Marisa Portolese, and Olivier Christinat offer three very different ways of presenting the female body. Juxtaposed as they are here, they both encounter and confront beauty and age, attraction and maintaining distance, self-affirmation and abandonment in the other’s gaze. Nude or in intimate garb, all of these women are […]
Ciel variable 57 – CONSTRUCTED LANDSCAPE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2001-2002] by Jacques Doyon In spite of the diversity of their modalities and subjects, the works brought together here are notable for their common interest in the sutures and marks in the landscape, the zones where significant transformations and their underlying issues are revealed surreptitiously or, on the contrary, concealed. These fault lines, or […]
Ciel variable 56 - MAKING WORLDS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2001-2002] by Jacques Doyon The works in this issue will seem, at first glance, diametrically opposed to each other. They involve very different subjects, from monumental architecture (Carl Zimmerman) to the world of collectors (Veli Granõ) to the ruins and waste of consumer society (Ramona Ramlochand). And their visual means – their modes of […]
Ciel variable 55 – BOUNDARIES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2001] by Jacques Doyon The terrorist attack of September 11 took the impact of the media image to new heights, with the inclusion in its scenario of the moment when various cameras enabled the entire world to witness the event live and left us for hours in fear of what might come next. For […]
Ciel variable 54 - GARDENS-LANDSCAPES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2001] by Jacques Doyon The photographs of gardens and landscapes presented here are not about looking at plants, flowers, and trees for themselves, in the sense of botanical documentation. Rather, they attempt to highlight what rules over the arrangement of or investment in such places and what is at play in our reading of […]
Ciel variable 53 - IDENTITIES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Winter 2000-2001] by Jacques Doyon Identity is a precarious notion, constantly being redefined, at the intersection of many dimensions of belonging and identification. It is a self-definition, by and through the view of others. Identity is always a question of positionings and negotiations. The part of it that may seem to be inherent or original […]
Ciel variable 52 - EVERYDAY OBJECTS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Fall 2000] by Jacques Doyon The way we glance at objects in a familiar environment could be the connection between the photographic works assembled for this issue. Whether these objects are contained within the household, a workplace, or a small business, they inhabit and condition our spaces and ways of life. For Nicolas Baier, the […]
Ciel variable 51 – ELSEWERE… NOWHERE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
by Jacques Doyon Travel is an inherent aspect of contemporary civilization. Whatever the distance, we have to see other places. We are all tourists, in one way or another, always foreigners to someone or some society, which we observe with mixed feelings of curiosity, empathy, rejection, or fear. The image has become the heart of […]
Ciel variable 50 - APPROACHING THE PLACE | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Geoffrey James
[Spring 2000] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary The Lethbridge Project looks at both the city and nature, and at their transformations. Geoffrey James evokes the way in which landscape, whether in the heart of the city or […]
Ciel variable 50 - APPROACHING THE PLACE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon
[Spring 2000] by Jacques Doyon The city, a constant subject of photography, distills all of the issues of society. It is both centre and periphery, a nucleus made of contradictory and hierarchical strata shooting out roots to invade an ever-broader territory. In this issue, we find images that are concerned not so much with the […]