[Winter 2026]
Michel-Hardy Vallée, Premières planches. Photos de John Max
by Fanny Bieth
Québec, VU, 2025, 208 pages
[EXCERPT]
The Montreal photographer John Max (1936–2011) was twenty years old when he made the earliest pictures presented in Michel Hardy-Vallée’s Premières planches. Photos de John Max, recently published by VU. For this book, Hardy-Vallée, a historian of photography well known to readers of Ciel variable, delved into Max’s early contact sheets of photographs taken between 1956 and 1963. These previously unpublished images document the art scene – from studios to openings, from apartments to clubs and cafés – in the midst of Quebec’s modernization period. Beyond their social and historical value, these shots display his affirmed creative approach, as he was already making use of the grain and contrast for which he would become known as his professional status grew.
[…]
[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 131 – Collecting ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: Premières planches. Photos de John Max]
Fanny Bieth is an author and a doctoral student in art history, specializing in photographic studies, at UQAM. In her research, she looks at the relations between psychiatry and the media of photography and film. She is the publishing coordinator for the magazine Captures.