Michel Campeau

Michel Campeau, Gestes et rituels de la chambre noire – Mona Hakim, An Affective Typology of Photographic Knowledge

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Portfolios
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Michel Campeau

A studious scrutinizer and inveterate gleaner, Michel Campeau offers a series of photographs conceived as a typology of the gestures and rituals inherent to darkroom practice. The work of a practitioner who brings images of the past back to life, his book presents, often with a touch of humour, an archaeological gaze at an almost-obsolescent technology. For Mona Hakim, the project takes a humanist approach, highlighting the labour and inventiveness of people who have remained anonymous.

Thematic presentation: Collecting

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Christos Dikeakos, Michel Campeau, Sara Knelman

The thematic dossier of this issue, titled Collecting, brings together series by artists and a writer— Christos Dikeakos, Michel Campeau, and Sara Knelman. Their work invites readers to explore portraits of collectors, archival materials that pay tribute to darkroom practices, and a century of images depicting women reading, highlighting the significance of the gestures, forms of knowledge, and modes of engagement that shape and circulate culture.

Editorial: A Passion for Images

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Christos Dikeakos, Michel Campeau, Sara Knelman

[Winter 2026] A Passion for Images by Jacques Doyon Each of the series presented in this issue bespeaks a passion for images. Assembled by artists and a writer – all of whom are both collectors, archivists, and documentarians – are portraits of British Columbian collectors of contemporary and Indigenous art, archival images that pay tribute […]

Disraeli Revisited: Chronicle of an Event in Quebec Photography — Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth | Artists: Claire Beaugrand-Champagne, Michel Campeau, Roger Charbonneau

[Summer 2023] By Fanny Bieth Musée McCord Stewart, Montréal 28.10.2022 — 19.02.2023 [Excerpt] Commemorating an experiment conducted fifty years ago, the exhibition Disraeli Revisited: Chronicle of an Event in Quebec Photography is the result of an extraordinary collaboration between the team at the McCord Stewart Museum and those involved in the original project. The show […]

Et fili ? Cultural Transmission and the Quebec Photobook — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Anne-Marie Proulx, Bertrand Carrière, Charles-Frédérick Ouellet, Donigan Cumming, Florence Le Blanc, Guillaume Simoneau, John Max, Matthieu Brouillard, Michel Campeau, Sylvain Cousineau

[Hiver 2022] By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] It’s a lovely image: my father, who had been taking photographs since the 1960s, had given me his Beseler 23C II enlarger. I went to pick it up in order to flesh out my amateur darkroom, and I was thinking about transmission of culture. The caption might have quoted […]

Robert Graham, Three Montréal Photographers + — Zoë Tousignant, Robert Graham’s History of Photography in Montreal

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Donigan Cumming, Michel Campeau, Tom Gibson

[Fall 2021] By Zoë Tousignant [Excerpt] There are those of us who believe that what lies beyond the photographic frame is as interesting as what is contained within it. This is not founded on a sentiment that the photo graph alone is not enough. Quite the contrary: it comes from a place of such deep […]

Michel Campeau. Photography, the Photographer, the Collector – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 110 - MIGRATION | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Michel Campeau

February 22, 2022 [originally published in CV110 in Fall 2018 ] — The exhibition Michel Campeau – Life before Digital, a retrospective of Michel Campeau’s approach in the early 1970s, offers a wellrounded view of his ideas on photography, on the figure of the photographer, and on that of the collector who finally took over from the producer of images…

ENTR’ACTE . A Collective Portrait of the Royal Victoria Hospital – James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 109 - REVISIT | Essays
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Angela Grauerholz, Chih-Chien Wang, Gabor Szilasi, Luc Courchesne, Marie-Jeanne Musiol, Michel Campeau, Raymonde April, Roberto Pellegrinuzzi, Serge Clément, Yan Giguère, Yann Pocreau

Octobre 19, 2021 [originally published in CV109 in Summer 2018 ] — This round-robin exhibition featured powerful and evocative images of the original site of the recently abandoned Royal Victoria Hospital. Eleven Montreal artists were invited by the RBC Art and Heritage Centre of the McGill University Health Centre to tour the original site…

Michel Campeau, The Donkey that Became a Zebra : histoires de chambre noire – Joan Fontcuberta, Fire, Prayers and the Place of Photography

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Portfolios
Authors: Joan Fontcuberta | Artists: Michel Campeau

January 25, 2021 [originally published in CV107 in Fall 2017] — Just when we thought we had all the answers to the enigma of our memory fixed in silver salts, life – without so much as a by-your-leave – changed the questions. Perhaps because life is not a problem to be solved, as Søren Kierkegaard said, but a reality to be experienced…

Ruins

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Portfolios
Artists: André Barrette, Joan Fontcuberta, Michel Campeau

[Fall 2017 ] — Thematic Introduction

Images of Montreal. Some notable projects on Montreal neighbourhoods – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Claire Beaugrand-Champagne, Clara Gutsche, David Miller, Gabor Szilasi, Michel Campeau, Miki Gingras, Patrick Dionne, Roger Charbonneau

May 12, 2020 [originally published in CV105 in Winter 2017] — Over the years, Montreal has been the subject of a number of major documentary projects. We might think of Gabor Szilasi’s prolific production – in particular, as he recorded development in the city, his photographs of St. Catherine Street (1977–79) in which he immortalized the configuration of the stores along the street…

Montrealities

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 […]

Campeau, Carrière, Clément: Accumulations – Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 102 - FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Bertrand Carrière, Michel Campeau, Serge Clément

September 24, 2019 [originally published in CV102 in Winter 2016] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Robert Burley, La disparition de l’obscurité / Michel Campeau, Icônes de l’obsolescence – Louis Cummins

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Louis Cummins | Artists: Michel Campeau, Robert Burley

October 15, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal 2013 – Zoë Tousignant, Drone: The Automated Image

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Barbara Probst, David K. Ross, Donovan Wylie, Elina Brotherus, Ilse Bing, Jules Spinatsch, Michel Campeau, Mishka Henner, Trevor Paglen, Véronique Ducharme

August 13, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — The challenge faced by theme-based biennials is to propose a conceptual framework that allows a great number and wide diversity of artworks to be brought together while providing an original viewpoint that positively inflects the reading of the works gathered. Rarely has Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal offered such a cohesive and powerful curatorial statement as in its 13th edition, Drone: The Automated Image…

Michel Campeau, La chambre noire – Richard Baillargeon, On Obsolescence and Being Photographic

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Interviews, Portfolios
Authors: Richard Baillargeon | Artists: Michel Campeau

October 11, 2016 [originally published in Winter 2011] — Michel Campeau, who has been a contemporary-art photographer for four decades, has received the Duke and Duchess of York Prize (2010), the Jean-Paul-Riopelle Career Grant (2009), and the Higashikawa International Photography Prize in Japan (1994). His work, which explores the subjective and narrative dimensions of images, questions the conventions of documentary photography. A retrospective exhibition of his work in 1996 at the Canadian Contemporary Photography Museum covered his production from 1971 to 1996. Campeau is represented by Galerie Simon Blais (Montreal), and lives and works in Montreal.

Series

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Portfolios
Artists: Alain Pratte, Chuck Samuels, Michel Campeau, Yan Giguère

[Winter 2011] Fragmented narratives, recording of traces, and role playing within the image are some of the ways in which the artists presented in this issue approach the notion of series. Systematic or scattered, the series provides a means to gather multiple images to evoke a personal universe, possible dramas, a disappearing world, or the […]

Narrative Series

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, […]

Darkroom, Michel Campeau – Olivier Asselin

Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Book Reviews
Authors: Olivier Asselin | Artists: Michel Campeau

[Summer 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Michel Campeau Martin Parr (ed.), Nazraeli Press, 2007, 80 pp.

Michel Campeau, Arborescences – Robert Graham, Under a Campeau Blue Sky

Ciel variable 54 - GARDENS-LANDSCAPES | Portfolios
Authors: Robert Graham | Artists: Michel Campeau

[Spring 2001] . . . a late-summer bounty of natural and unnatural growth, the cultivated and the uncontrollable. For while this garden has its real-world aspect and can be found on a map, it serves for Campeau as the foliage in a narrative tour of an interior landscape, described in muted speech and in surroundings […]

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