[Summer 2026]
Thematic presentation
by Jacques Doyon
The artists’ portfolios that we present in this issue are apprehended from the point of view of the tableau – photographic, of course, but also drawing on pictorial and even cinematographic traditions. In views of daily life, scenes of conflicts, and portraits, posed or candid, they all have a societal dimension, often palpably referential, though not specific so much as archetypal and emblematic of the contemporary era.
DONIGAN CUMMING
Primer
From the cramped space of a booth whose doors and windows act as frames, visitors’ gestures and facial expressions are captured on the fly, in portrait or landscape format. Attention is tightly focused on the exchange of money for parking services – a simple transaction that illustrates a relational dynamic characteristic of our contemporary society. Forty-five years later, Cumming has resuscitated this series in an artist book with an unusual format, a little like a long film sequence, condensing all the elements of his subsequent practice.
with an essay by Mona Hakim
LUC DELAHAYE
Le bruit du monde
After a celebrated career as a photojournalist and war reporter, Luc Delahaye made the radical choice to abandon these professions, thereafter producing images only as an artist. The most remarkable aspect of this metamorphosis is that the subject matter in the seventy-four works he has created since 2001 is exactly the same as that in his previous work: scenes of desolation and war, impacts on civilian populations, portraits of victims, political or institutional gatherings, and so on. But now they are unique very-large-format pieces, with compositions worked as tableaux, sometimes digitally manipulated.
with an essay by Stephen Horne
JEFF WALL
Photographs 1984–2023
A recent retrospective exhibition, produced by the MOCA in Toronto, brought together Jeff Wall’s early works on backlit panels, large-format photographic tableaux (scenes of daily life, allegories, and compositions evoking the genre of history painting), and more minimalist black-and-white works. The exhibition juxtaposed the works from these different periods to highlight the essential role played by composition, framing, editing, and scale in Wall’s approach – what might be called formal realism, or realistic formalism, in which reality is simply material for the purpose of better vision.
with an essay by Kenneth Hayes
[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 132 – TABLEAUX ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: TITRE ARTICLE]