Clara Gutsche – Denis Lessard, La série des couvents. Un patrimoine en transition

[Winter 1998-1999]

This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Summary
Denis Lessard introduces his essay by defining what motivated Clara Gutsche to explore the world of cloistered nuns, its characteristic culture of welcoming, and the myths that surround it. Lessard then discusses the camera’s incursions into the world of monastic women in Quebec and comments on the composition of Gutsche’s images, showing how her visual construction sometimes reveals a certain sense of the foreign. After exploring how the social subtext is expressed in Gutsche’s photographs, Lessard concludes with a reflection on the separation between the profane and the sacred in contemporary society.

Her current work, Série des couvents, is being exhibited at the Musée de Joliette until January 10, 1999 and a serie on Les sœurs de la charité de Québec at the Musée de la civilisation de Québec until August 22th 1999.