Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Brian Merrett
[November 16, 2022] By Zoë Tousignant. In the summer of 1972, Brian Merrett travelled to Europe for the first time on what would amount to his version of a “grand tour.” Accompanied by photographer Jennifer Harper, he spent a total of nine weeks backpacking around France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, England, and Ireland.
Artists' Projects, Artists' Projects
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Brian Merrett
[November 16, 2022] Brian Merrett has taken a deep dive into his early years of practice, and here he presents photographs taken in 1972, during his “grand tour” of Europe. This formative trip consolidated his activist’s eye and his interest in architectural heritage, which he had developed in Montreal and which would endure throughout his career.
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 […]
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.
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 […]
Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Portfolios
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Vincent Lafrance
[Summer 2021] Par Zoë Tousignant [Extrait] Vincent Lafrance and I first met in 1996, when we were both young students in Cégep du Vieux-Montréal’s photography program. I decided early on that I liked his photographs – so much so that I purchased a selection of small prints that he had made for a class assignment: […]
Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Ewa Monika Zebrowski
[Winter 2021] By Zoë Tousignant It stands to reason that much thought, time, and energy go into the making of a photobook. Fortunately, the work that it involves is usually shared by several individuals who, each expert in their own field, contribute to creating the end product. These individuals most often include a photographer, a […]
Ciel variable 108 - GOING PUBLIC | Portfolios
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Gabor Szilasi
June 29, 2021 [originally published in CV108 in Winter 2018] — Photographer Gabor Szilasi was born in Hungary in 1928 and immigrated to Canada in 1957. Soon after settling in Montreal, Szilasi began to photograph the many art openings that he and his wife, artist Doreen Lindsay, regularly attended…
Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant
May 5, 2020 [originally published in CV105 in Winter 2017] — The essay reprinted here was written for an exhibition curated by Zoë Tousignant and presented at Artexte. The exhibition was developed as part of Tousignant’s long-term research project, which examines histories and relationships between photography and the printed document in Canada…
Ciel variable 102 - FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE | Interviews
Authors: Quentin Bajac, Zoë Tousignant
August 21, 2019 [originally published in Winter 2016] — Quentin Bajac has been the chief curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, since 2013. In the fall of 2015, MoMA opened the exhibition Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015 (November 7, 2015, to March 20, 2016) and published the third volume in the Photography at MoMA.
Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant
November 26, 2015 — I have been reading Ciel variable since 1996. A while ago, its editor-in-chief, Jacques Doyon, asked me to write an essay, destined for the Archives section of the magazine’s website, that would demonstrate “the importance of the magazine as a medium and space of exploration for photography.” And so, over the past few weeks, I have been re-reading…
Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Richard Mosse
May 6, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — One would have to be a seasoned cynic to be indifferent to Richard Mosse’s film installation The Enclave (2012–13). Visually, it is an impressionistic, six-screened montage of beautifully lurid hues of hot pink; politically, it reveals a heretofore unseen side of the conflict that has ravaged the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1998; and theoretically, it raises fundamental questions regarding the meaning and function of images of war…
Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Béla Egyedi
March 6, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — Béla Ferenc Egyedi was born in 1913 in Esztergom, Hungary. He immigrated to Canada in 1951 and lived for many years in Montreal’s Milton-Park neighbourhood, at various addresses on Lorne Avenue and Durocher Street, near Milton Street. He was simultaneously a photographer, a printmaker, a poet, and a ceramicist…
Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Serge Clément
January 9, 2019 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — I travelled to Quebec City to see Serge Clément’s exhibition Constellations on a snowy Sunday afternoon in April. I had little prior knowledge of the show, presented at VU, centre de diffusion et de production de la photographie from March 21 to April 20, 2014, save for its basic idea: to showcase Clément’s collection of photobooks…
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…
Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Alain Pratte
April 30, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — Obituaries, I am told, become a part of everyday life once you reach a certain age. At one point, these public announcements of death made in local newspapers on a daily or weekly basis take on more significance as you begin to recognize, either literally or figuratively, the names and faces of those who have died. Regularly reading obituaries is a way to both defy and ease oneself into death…
Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Donigan Cumming, Matthieu Brouillard
September 26, 2017 [originally published in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Curated by Erin Silver, this bilingually (and cleverly) titled exhibition juxtaposed works by Matthieu Brouillard and Donigan Cumming, two artists who, although they are separated by a generation and consequently possess different measures of experience, are both well known to the Montreal art scene. The act of juxtaposition is, in itself, a strong curatorial statement…
Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: André Cornellier
May 1, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — Two photographic panoramas evocative of nineteenth-century popular entertainment were on view at the McCord Museum of Canadian History. The first was a panoramic vista made by the Wm. Notman & Son studio in 1896. The larger of the two, titled The Great Mural, was created by photographer André Cornellier in 1996, exactly a century later. Both show a 360-degree bird’s-eye (or God’s-eye) view of Montreal, as seen from the southwest…
Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Alain Chagnon, Brian Merrett, Gabor Szilasi, John Max, Normand Rajotte, Roger Charbonneau
March 14, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — The acquisitions of Quebec photography from the 1960s to the 1980s are thus part of the institution’s current recognition of – and seemingly unquenchable gusto for – photographic imagery of all kinds, and these acquisitions have added considerably to the growing photography collection, which now totals over 1,500 works.
Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant
[Fall 2009] What images does the expression “photographic modernism in Canada” call to mind? If you are conversant with early-twentieth-century Canadian photography, the pictures of John Vanderpant, the Dutch-born Vancouver-based photographer who was the subject of an exhibition presented at the National Gallery of Canada in 1976, will likely be conjured. The photographic production of […]
Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Yves Beauregard
[Fall 2008] by Zoë Tousignant From September 25, 2008, to January 4, 2009, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) is presenting Quebec City and its Photographers, 1850–1908: The Yves Beauregard Collection, the first extensive exhibition of early Quebec photography to be organized by the museum in over twenty years. Quebec City and its […]