Michel Hardy-Vallée

ABLAZE (did Rodin like chandeliers?), by Ewa Monika Zebrowski – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Ewa Monika Zebrowski

[November 12 2025] By Michel Hardy-Vallée ABLAZE (did Rodin like chandeliers?), Ewa Monika Zebrowski How many dimensions are there to a sheet of paper? Because of its thinness, three feels excessive; but two also seems insufficient: how can a book have a third dimension if its pages only have two? Bookworms were likely pioneers of […]

Guy Delisle, Pour une fraction de seconde – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS | Lectures, Readings
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Guy Delisle

[Fall 2025] Pour une fraction de seconde by Michel Hardy-Vallée Paris, Delcourt, 2024, 202 pages [EXCERPT] For a work to be called a photograph, it must contain at least one image. Add a second one and you have a comic strip. And with a third, you have a film if you make them scroll by […]

Michael Torosian, Bound Greatness – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Michael Torosian

On the occasion of the summer 2024 exhibition paying tribute to the publishing work of Toronto-based Michael Torosian, Michel Hardy-Vallée takes a look at some of the books he has devoted to photography. The Lumiere Press titles, which focus on eminent photographers, are deeply rooted, he notes, within a broader print culture, as Torosian placed great importance on aspects such as image reproduction, typography, presswork, and bookbinding.

Maxence Croteau, L’infime (codex) – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Readings
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Maxence Croteau

In L’infime (codex), a single-copy volume, Maxence Croteau photographed one image of each of the books in a university library on every single shelf. The exhaustiveness of his approach effaces the hierarchy of the gaze, Hardy-Vallée believes, but its materiality is its most interesting aspect.

Sophie Jodoin, d’un seul souffle – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Sophie Jodoin

[Summer 2024] by Michel Hardy-Vallée [EXCERPT] Sophie Jodoin is an artist of grey nuances. Her range of tones is predictable and her textures are matte – diametrically opposed to the canons of black-and-white photography, in which the world is projected through a scale of contrasts from deep shadows to brilliant reflections. By restraining her palette, […]

Goose Village, by Marisa Portolese – Michel Hardy-Vallée

The Photobook
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Marisa Portolese

[March 13, 2024] By Michel Hardy-Vallée. When you land in a new city, or a new neighbourhood, asking for directions may sometimes garner pearls like this one: “Turn left after the old Perrette corner store, the one they tore down.” The memory of places is much more deeply grounded than are buildings, whose existence obeys the rationale of capitalism more than that of residents’ lives.

Marisa Portolese

Bertrand Carrière, Autoroutes 10-20-55 — Michel Hardy-Vallée, Landscape and Automobile

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Bertrand Carrière

[Winter 2024] Landscape and Automobile By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] Recently, driving home from Quebec City, I stopped for hot dogs in Neuville. The setting wasn’t elegant: a gas station with a food concession, surrounded by a lot with vague edges. I wanted something shapeless and soft after spending a full day with intellectually and aesthetically […]

Photograms and Photographs 2020–1970, by Michael Flomen – Michel Hardy-Vallée

The Photobook
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Michael Flomen

[November 9, 2023] By Michel Hardy-Vallée. As a critic, you’re expected to impartially hand out scorecards with stars, thumbs, or tomatoes to prevent customers from wasting their hard-earned money on “bad” works…

Michael Flomen

Edward Hillel, Framing the Sequel — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Edward Hillel

[Fall 2023] Framing the Sequel Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] I would love to go to the Main for a smoked meat right now, but it’s closed. I mean: the Main Deli has just closed. It was the one right across the street from Schwartz’s. It served the same kind of sandwiches that are too fat to […]

Object Lesson: On the Influence of Richard Benson – Michel Hardy-Vallée

The Photobook
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Richard Benson

[August 9, 2023] By Michel Hardy-Vallée. One reason we have so many interesting photobooks to review is because the printing industry produces them. Photographers used to be cast aside as mere operators until various changes in attitude by the press, the general public, the art world, education, and even the legal world reinforced and consolidated their role as agents endowed with volition and skill.

Richard Benson

Phyllis Lambert, A Way of Life – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Phyllis Lambert

[Summer 2023] Phyllis Lambert, A Way of Life By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] Photography is inextricable from Phyllis Lambert’s career. Architectural surveys, studies of urban space, activism, advertising, project documentation, archives, media relations, and exhibition catalogues are based on this tool, which is as essential to modern life as con- crete. Nevertheless, it is only in […]

John Max, Line Leading through Photography — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: John Max

[Winter 2023] John Max, Line Leading through Photography By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] To sum up an artist’s career apparently takes just a few major works, some biographical references, and several general remarks on how the artist’s work was received, all in chronological order. No need to write a novel. But to achieve such a level […]

Zone Eleven, by Mike Mandel, photographs by Ansel Adams – Michel Hardy-Vallée

The Photobook
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Ansel Adams, Mike Mandel

[January 18, 2023] By Michel Hardy-Vallée. Fairy tales and novels of chivalry have the power to normalize royalty – a tenacious institution, despite revolutions and regicides. In photography, Ansel Adams is, in a way, royalty…

Ansel Adams, Mike Mandel

SCUMB Manifesto, by Justine Kurland – Michel Hardy-Vallée

The Photobook
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Justine Kurland

[November 29, 2022] By Michel Hardy-Vallée. So, let’s review: Valerie Solanas wrote the radical feminist SCUM Manifesto (SCUM stands for Society for Cutting Up Men) in 1967 to protest how men were leading the world (to failure) and then shot Andy Warhol in 1968 because he was controlling her life and had, in her view, plagiarized a play that she had written…

Justine Kurland

Zoë Tousignant, The Continuing History — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Interviews
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée, Zoë Tousignant

[Fall 2022] Zoë Tousignant, The Continuing History An interview by Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] Zoë Tousignant is the curator of photography at the McCord Museum. She holds a PhD in art history from Concordia University and an MA in museum studies from the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on twentieth-century and contemporary photography produced in […]

Pierre Blache, L’insolence des villes — Stay Home; Take a Walk, Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Portfolios
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Pierre Blache

[Fall 2022] Stay Home; Take a Walk By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] My memory of the early months of the pandemic remains blurry, but these two contradictory, yet simultaneous, injunctions issued at the beginning of lockdown have suddenly popped up in my mind. These imperatives, apparently banal – even apparently insignificant – were to change our […]

Le livre photographique: ses formes, ses raisons, ses enjeux

The Photobook
Authors: Jérôme Delgado, Louis Perreault, Michel Hardy-Vallée, Zoë Tousignant

[August 27, 2022] Round table discussion presented by Ciel Variable at the 2022 Papier Art Fair. The discussion was held in French.

Electronic Landscapes: Music, Space and Resistance in Detroit, by Isaac Diggs and Edward Hillel – Michel Hardy-Vallée

The Photobook
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Edward Hillel, Isaac Diggs

[June 20, 2022] By Michel Hardy-Vallée. Outside of Detroit, it’s most likely that the symbols of this post-industrial city are its ruins: of houses, large and small; of automobile plants; of grandiose theatres…

Edward Hillel, Isaac Diggs

Prospectus for a Future History of Quebec Photography — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée

[Summer 2022] By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] When we try to reach a better understanding of the history of photography in Quebec, we inevitably stumble into three common areas. The ﬁrst is absence: so, where is this reference book that everyone’s waiting for and no one has written yet? And yet, there are books on the […]

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 […]

Gabor, by Joannie Lafrenière – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Joannie Lafrenière

[May 25 2022 — Exclusive Web Content] By Michel Hardy-Vallée. Surely, photographer Gabor Szilasi needs no introduction! He has worked in every genre, in addition to teaching and being involved in the community. He has made a huge and warm mark, and his images still have the power to move us…

Joannie Lafrenière

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