Luc Bourdon. Playing with Images and Sounds — Nicole Gingras

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Nicole Gingras | Artists: Luc Bourdon

Luc Bourdon, a major figure in video and film, has produced some fifty works, many on the subject of culture, including La mémoire des anges (2008) and La part du diable (2017), built on material from the NFB archives. In this interview, conducted during celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of Vidéographe, with which Bourdon has worked, Nicole Gingras talks to him about his early career, his love of words, and his vision of editing. Bourdon, who adopted video in the 1980s for its “potential of saying ‘I see,’” acknowledges that he was influenced by Gary Hill and Michael Snow. He owes them the idea of using images as “a means of inserting words and phrases” into his work. After creating in the “immediacy” provided by video, Bourdon became involved in productions that required “more energy and research,” such as La mémoire des anges, an “impressionistic” film on which he spent a good deal of time.

David Tomas, Speech and silence — Vincent Bonin

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Vincent Bonin | Artists: David Tomas

Invited by Ciel variable to re-evaluate David Tomas’s practice, Vincent Bonin offers a cross section of the intellectual trajectory of artist and anthropologist Tomas, who died in 2019. Bonin discusses the importance that Tomas accorded to silence, even up to his final work, which bore the ambiguous words “No Lot.” “This ‘no’ now resonates in the posthumous space, as a last form of the resistance of silence after the interruption of speech,” Bonin observes. The creator of kinetic installations marked by “semiotic complexity,” Tomas was known for his technological innovations (he began to use strobe lights, chronometers, and automatic triggers in the 1980s). He participated in the critical reassessment of the history of photography, as did Jeff Wall and Alan Sekula, while avoiding “statements of intent,” preferring to base his work on fragmentary or performative thought, and he remained silent even “when he was present.”

Moyra Davey. The Personal Narrative and the Art of Fragmented Anti-dogma Narration — Nicolas Mavrikakis

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Nicolas Mavrikakis | Artists: Moyra Davey

In reaction to “left-wing extremism” and campaigns for “art that is moral and bland, with no grey areas,” critic Nicolas Mavrikakis offers an impassioned reading of Moyra Davey’s practice, and specifically her video i confess (2019). This work, which addresses polarizing themes, leads, in Mavrikakis’s view, to reflection “beyond the opposition between good and evil.” Unclassifiable and complex, based on plays of images within the image, the video is “a sort of Russian doll” with multiple references, and Davey quotes James Baldwin and Pierre Vallières, among others. Like i confess, and Joyce Wieland’s film Pierre Vallières (1972), upon which Mavrikakis also comments, this essay rises against dogmas and suggests that we not get bogged down in fixed, simple readings of cultural history, including when we discuss Vallières, the author of White Niggers of America.

Chih-Chien Wang. A Gift of Images — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Essays
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Chih-Chien Wang

In this essay, Sylvain Campeau explores a genre rarely discussed and yet essential to Chih-Chien Wang’s work: the still life – and, in particular, the theme of food. Although fruits and vegetables inhabit Wang’s photographs and videos, that’s not the whole story. Turning to theoretical reflections such as that of Anne Cauquelin and her “table gifts,” Campeau regards the still life as “a fundamental part of a gift, and this is even more obvious in Wang’s work.” The idea of the gift, of a possible “gathering of guests,” leads Campeau to dwell on the artist’s works in which sharing takes the form of speaking, of “confessions.” “Through the exchange and the giving of human beings’ formative stories, there is a question of evading what in them determines us and defines us too closely,” he suggests.

Évariste Desparois. A Disappearance Story — Sébastien Hudon

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Essays
Authors: Sébastien Hudon | Artists: Évariste Desparois

It was the discovery and acquisition of facsimiles of works by Évariste Desparois that gave the impetus for Sébastien Hudon’s essay. Hudon describes the first layer of a long-term investigation, a noble mission to bring back from oblivion an inventive artist who created photomontages that earned him ephemeral celebrity. Unknown to historians, a mysterious figure even unto his death, Desparois emerged in an era when modernity was taking off in Quebec. Based on sparse documentation, Hudon follows Desparois’s career, finding clues to his stay in Europe in the orbit of Riopelle and Borduas. “What could have happened for a contemporary artist who was among the signatories of Prisme d’yeux and Refus global to be so utterly wiped out of the history of art and photography in Quebec?” Hudon wonders. “The surprising disappearance of Évariste Desparois, and the splitting up of his body of work, bespeaks the fate of so many artists.”

Alessandra Sanguinetti, Alec Soth, Araki Nobuyoshi / Juergen Teller. Correspondence and Adventures in Book Form — Jérôme Delgado

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Essays
Authors: Jérôme Delgado | Artists: Alec Soth, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Araki Nobuyoshi, Juergen Teller

Four photographers, three books, two cousins, one prisoner: beyond the heterogeneous content discussed, Jérôme Delgado addresses correspondence as a source of creativity and building closeness among culturally, socially, or physically distant individuals. During the pandemic lockdown, photographer Alec Soth exchanged letters with C. Fausto Cabrera, who was literally locked down in a prison. The result of their epistolary dialogue became a book and two unusual images. For decades, photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti travelled to the Argentinian countryside to visit two cousins who, through images, became both her creative correspondents and the protagonists in their adventures. Photographers Araki Nobuyoshi and Juergen Teller, both of them drawn to flesh and to life, offer a purely visual dialogue. Their book testifies, as a correspondence would, to a deep friendship, mutual respect, and the passage of time.

Gathering Clouds. A History of Photography Through Clouds — Bruno Chalifour

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Essays
Authors: Bruno Chalifour

[Winter 2021] By Bruno Chalifour After months of a world pandemic, being surrounded by clouds may sound like a reprieve: fluffy, light, ethereal, and flying higher than the contemporary political discourse in the United States, clouds may provide temporary solace in our dark, sometimes ignorant, times. The exhibition Gathering Clouds, Photographs from the Nineteenth Century […]

Les Années Musicales : 1920–2020. The Space-Music Dimension Becomes Multiplicity — Edward Pérez-González

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Essays
Authors: Edward Pérez-González

[Winter 2021] Par Edward Pérez-González The Single and the Multiple. Briefly, multiplicity can be defined as a condition that amplifies things and phenomena; a state of abundance, of potentialities, that enables us to perceive and comprehend the world through different and heterogeneous dimensions – from another dimension. This mode of the single and the multiple […]

Ewa Monika Zebrowski, Le livre photographique comme espace de collaboration — Zoë Tousignant

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 […]

3e Biennale des photographes du monde arabe contemporain. Regards sur le Liban, l’Égypte et le Maroc – Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Essays
Authors: Claudia Polledri

[Summer 2020] By Claudia Polledri The third edition of the Biennial of Contemporary Arab World Photography,1 curated by Gabriel Bauret, was held in Paris in 2019. Inaugurated in 2015 on the joint initiative of the Arab World Institute (AWI) and the Maison européenne de la photographie (MEP), the event is important because it showcases works […]

Zoom Photo Festival Saguenay. Overview on the Tenth Year of the Photojournalism Festival – Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Essays
Authors: Sophie Bertrand

[Summer 2020] By Sophie Bertrand For the last ten years, the Zoom Photo Festival been a mid-autumn feature in Chicoutimi, in Quebec’s Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region. La Pulperie de Chicoutimi, a national historic site and regular partner of the festival, serves as headquarters and hosts most of the exhibitions, with La Zone Portuaire, and other shows are […]

MOMENTA 2019. Listening to Things – Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Essays
Authors: Charles Guilbert

[Summer 2020] By Charles Guilbert For the second edition of Momenta | Biennale de l’image1 (it had fourteen editions under its previous name, Le Mois de la photo), co-curators María Wills Londoño, Audrey Genois, and Maude Johnson chose an evocative and seemingly paradoxical title: The Life of Things. It was a title that might bring […]

Dakar, From the Studio to the Sidewalk — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Babacar Traoré (Doli), Boubacar Touré Mandémory, Bouna Médoune Sèye, Élise Fitte-Duval, Fatou Kandé Senghor, Ibrahima Thiam, KhéraBaba, Mabeye Deme, Malick Welli

[Winter 2020] Par Erika Nimis Dakar, a cosmopolitan capital city and crossroads on the Atlantic coast, open to all creative currents, has grown under the gaze of its photographers. An independent field of professional photography emerged in the 1990s, and the institution of the Mois de la Photo has contributed to legitimizing an increasingly engaged […]

Geneviève Cadieux, Vast Still Tender: Ghost Ranch — Laurie Milner

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Essays
Authors: Laurie Milner | Artists: Geneviève Cadieux

[Winter 2020] Par Laurie Milner Is it the greyness of the April afternoon that makes the Rene Blouin Gallery seem so luminous as I enter Geneviève Cadieux’s exhibition Ghost Ranch?1 I had heard the buzz among artists and colleagues that this was a show to be seen – a virtuoso production by an august Montreal […]

Stephen Gill, Gill and the Birds: A Photographic Code of Ethics — Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Stephen Gill

[Winter 2020] Par Alexis Desgagnés On the threshold of my teenage years, my greatest passion was to observe birds. I spent countless hours, binoculars hung around my neck, prowling slowly, silently, through woods and meadows, looking out for a rare gem! When I was thirteen, a camera, a gift from my stepmother, replaced the binoculars, […]

Martin Bureau. Borders and Walls — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: Martin Bureau

March 7, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — Par Sophie Bertrand. “The number of walls has tripled since the Cold War, and it has kept growing since 2001; it now consists of almost 30,000 km of armed borders.”¹ This observation, made in 2013 by the researchers of the Chaire Raoul-Dandurand en études stratégiques et diplomatiques at the Université du Québec à Montréal, during a conference on issues around walled borders, conveys much more than a malaise inherited from history…

CONTACT 2019. Violence — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Carrie Mae Weems

February 28, 2023 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Jill Glessing. Violence runs through our lives, experienced directly or through media representations. We are subject to its power to varying degrees depending on our geographical location, race, class, gender, and access to high-speed internet. We are well acquainted with the variety of ways that humans inflict harm – whether physical, social, or psychological – upon one another…

About the Face: The Photographs of Dave Heath — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

February 13, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Pierre Dessureault. In a body of work accumulated over more than sixty years, Dave Heath (1931–2016), a Canadian photographer born in the United States, challenged the qualities of the photographic medium and its techniques. He constantly probed, through images, Montaigne’s dictum that “every man carries the entire form of the human condition.”¹…

Luigi Ghirri. Flatness and Its Frame — Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Luigi Ghirri

February 6, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Stephen Horne. The Map and The Territory is a large and intricate exhibition of colour photographs by the late Italian artist Luigi Ghirri at the Jeu de Paume in Paris.¹ No doubt the curator of the exhibition, James Lingwood, adopted this title following up on a note that Ghirri wrote in 1970 in which he explained that “his aim was not to make photographs, but rather charts and maps.”²…

Nathan Lyons, An Exploration of Photography as Visual Language — Bruno Chalifour

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Bruno Chalifour | Artists: Nathan Lyons

April 12, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Bruno Chalifour. Some two years after Nathan Lyons’s death, on August 30, 2016, the George Eastman Museum (GEM) is presenting an overview of the life’s work of one of the central influencers of American photography in the second half of the twentieth century…

Anthropocene Fatigue: Edward Burtynsky’s Strategy of Collapse — Bénédicte Ramade

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade | Artists: Edward Burtynsky

April 5, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Bénédicte Ramade. From the start it seems taken for granted: Edward Burtynsky’s Anthropocene at the National Gallery of Canada will be technophilic.¹ At every opportunity…

Paris Photo, A Game of Memory — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Daido Moriyama

March 28, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Claudia Polledri. Context. The 22nd edition of the Paris Photo international photography fair took place November 8–11, 2018, in Paris. During the four-day fair, crowds of artists, gallery owners, collectors, publishers, curators, journalists, and photography lovers bustled through the Grand Palais, which had become a labyrinth of images organized by Paris Photo director Florence Bourgeois and artistic director Christoph Wiesner…

Milo Rau, Truth and Justice: The Congo Tribunal — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Milo Rau

22 mars, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Pierre Dessureault. The International Institute of Political Murder was created in 2007 by Swiss director, artist, and filmmaker Milo Rau. Since then, Rau has produced more than fifty plays, films, performances, and video installations on social and political realities, most of them complex and controversial…

Camerart. Art from the Point of View of Photography — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Charles Gagnon

September 7, 2022 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — The exhibition Camerart, produced by Galerie Optica and presented in Montreal from December 16, 1974, to January 14, 1975, was a pivotal event in the photography/art debate in Quebec…

Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie. Traces of the Chaos — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Debi Cornwall

August 31, 2022 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — By Érika Nimis. Every summer since 2010, Les Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie has literally pushed art photography into parks and forests and onto beaches, inviting visitors to a true treasure hunt along the legendary Route 132…

Marisa Portolese, Kinship as a Practice: In the Studio with Notman — Laurie Milner

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Essays
Authors: Laurie Milner | Artists: Marisa Portolese

August 3, 2022 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — By Laurie Milner. Kinship, broadly defined, is a core concept in Montreal artist Marisa Portolese’s photographic practice…

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…

Envisioning Photography as Collaborative – Ellen Tolmie

Ciel variable 110 - MIGRATION | Essays
Authors: Ellen Tolmie

February 16, 2022 [originally published in CV110 in Fall 2018 ] — A recent show at the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) challenges conventional notions of the lone photographer, the roles of subjects, and even the exhibition space. The idea of the photograph made by an individual, the photographer, now also lionized as artist and auteur, has long been embedded in the essential idea of what photography is…

In Pursuit of the Afterlife – James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 110 - MIGRATION | Essays
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Afterlife

February 9, 2022 [originally published in CV110 in Fall 2018 ] — In a remarkable group exhibition at Optica, Raymonde April, one of Canada’s finest living photographers, marshalled the talents of an intrepid group of itinerant fellow travellers – and to radiant effect…

On Foxes, Books, and Publishing – Louis Perreault

Ciel variable 109 - REVISIT | Essays
Authors: Louis Perreault

July 31, 2017 [originally published in CV109 in Spring 2018] — First, there was a fox. A few strollers noticed him, but he evaded a closer look by disappearing into the weeds of a post-industrial lot in Montreal East. I quickly took a liking to the animal and made him a sort of personal totem…

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…

After Jonathan Monk
, Exhibition Views as Augmented Reality
 – Marie J. Jean

Ciel variable 109 - REVISIT | Essays
Authors: Marie-Josée Jean | Artists: Jonathan Monk

Octobre 26, 2021 [originally published in CV109 in Summer 2018 ] — Exhibition views have taken on an increasingly important role since museum specialists began featuring them in exhibitions. Originally placed under glass, following a documentary protocol introduced via museology, this form of documentation has gradually come to be displayed on walls, occasionally ascribed the status of artwork…

The Arab Image Foundation through Akram Zaatari’s Eyes: Or, Variations on the Theme of Photography
 – Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 109 - REVISIT | Essays
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Akram Zaatari

November 3, 2021 [originally published in CV109 in Summer 2018 ] — According to Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari, photography is expressed in many ways. This is the message of his exhibition, Against Photography: An Annotated History of the Arab Image Foundation, a kaleidoscopic journey, through stories and images…

Alain Laframboise, Le regard du spectre – Florence Chantoury-Lacombe

Ciel variable 108 - GOING PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Florence Chantoury-Lacombe | Artists: Alain Laframboise

June 8, 2021 [originally published in French only in CV108 in Winter 2018] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Contact 2017, Focus on Canada – Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 108 - GOING PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: 2fik, Johan Hallberg-Campbell, Katherine Knight, Luis Jacob, Margo Pfeiff, Mark Lewis, Michael Snow, Michelle Latimer, Sandra Brewster, Suzy Lake

June 15, 2021 [originally published in French only in CV108 in Winter 2018] —
Promotion for “Canada 150” – marking the inception of the colonial enterprise of the “Dominion of Canada” and its unequal union with Quebec – was tepid, perhaps foretelling the inevitable response: a hundred and fifty years old – really? The land, of course, had been inhabited a little longer than that – about twelve thousand years – by Indigenous peoples…

Photography in Canada, 1960–2000, From Photographic Art to the World of Images – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 108 - GOING PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Angela Grauerholz, David McMillan, Gabor Szilasi, George Hunter, Jeff Wall, Jim Breukelman, Jin-Me Yoon, John Massey, Ken Lum, Lynne Cohen, Nina Raginsky, Robert Burley

June 22, 2021 [originally published in French only in CV108 in Winter 2018] — It seems less and less possible to analyze photography and photographic history without talking about production protocols, dissemination strategies, and contexts for conservation and display in public collections. Andrea Kunard situates her undertaking in regard to this position from the start…

“What Does Momenta Stand For?”. A Look Back at the Biennale de l’image de Montréal, 2017 – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 108 - GOING PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Akram Zaatari, Meryl McMaster, Pascal Grandmaison, Taryn Simon, Yto Barrada, Zanele Muholi

February 21, 2018 [originally published in CV108 in Winter 2018] — In June 2017, Le Mois de la Photo de Montréal metamorphosed to the Biennale de l’image, taking on the name MOMENTA, plural of momentum, which means “impetus, energy, force, thrust, drive, impulse”¹ and often denotes a favourable or propitious situation. Would the update to this international event devoted to the contemporary fixed and moving image be successful and yet provide continuity with the old formula?…

NFB, Still Photography Division Service – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

December 8, 2020 [originally published in CV107 in Fall 2017] — The NFB’s Still Photography Division was created in 1941, as a Canadian government information agency under the direction of John Grierson. By 1985, when the small unit’s production, now a collection of photographs, became the core of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Division had produced some 250,000 images.

Katia Kameli, Délio Jasse, Vasco Araújo, Photographs Back from the Void… – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Délio Jasse, Katia Kameli, Vasco Araújo

December 15, 2020 [originally published in CV107 in Fall 2017] — Three solo exhibitions (Katia Kameli, Délio Jasse, and Vasco Araújo) organized in London late in 2016 featured episodes from African and European history, particularly during the colonial period, in which the artists used “traces,” mainly photographic corpuses dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, updated via different media and devices.

Emanuel Licha, The Work of Seeing – Guillaume Lafleur

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Essays
Authors: Guillaume Lafleur | Artists: Emanuel Licha

December 22, 2020 [originally published in CV107 in Fall 2017] — Hotel Machine is a feature-length film in the current meaning of the term. It is Licha’s first production of this type, as he comes from the contemporary-art world and his work has usually been presented in galleries. It is related to the trend in documentary cinema that involves taking solid formal points of view – a trend that has been validated by following the traditional levers of funding.

Elles Photographes, The Spirit of Photography – Colette Tougas

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Essays
Authors: Colette Tougas | Artists: Angela Grauerholz

June 30, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — From July 19, 2016, to February 19, 2017, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts mounted an exhibition titled She Photographs, described in the press release as a “feminine echo” of the Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective at the museum in autumn 2016. More than simply an echo, this presentation of works by thirty female photographers, most of them Canadian, painted a strong and true portrait…

Josef Sudek, The World at My Window – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Josef Sudek

August 18, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — In the early 1920s, when Josef Sudek was becoming established as a photographer, Prague had emerged as a point of convergence for avant-garde movements from France, Germany, and Russia. After the dismantlement of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following the Great War, members of these movements were interested in rethinking art – both how it was practised and its relationship with life…

Uprisings, Images Unleashed: An Archive of Resistance – Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing

August 25, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — Resistance to oppression takes many forms. Antonio Gramsci, incarcerated during Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship, struggled to understand the workings of power. Developing his concept of hegemony, published later in Prison Notebooks, Gramsci proposed that power is always in flux and unstable, hence always vulnerable to popular contestation…

ARTGEIST II – FREE FIGURES

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Essays
Artists: Angela Grauerholz, Benoit Aquin, Éliane Excoffier, Marisa Portolese, Pascal Grandmaison

[Winter 2017] Artworks created as part of the find-raising campaign (2015-2016) Ciel variable presents the artworks created and acquired during its second fund-raising campaign, conducted in 2015–16. In the same spirit as Sitegeist, the 2012–13 campaign, Artgeist proposed that collectors support the magazine by acquiring an original work created specifically for them. This project also […]

Ensemble, United Images – Guy Sioui Durand

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Essays
Authors: Guy Sioui Durand

April 28, 2020 [originally published in CV105 in Winter 2017] — Two forms of orality opened and then closed the exhibition Ensemble at VU in Quebec City in October 2016. At the opening, an Indigenous talking circle, led by Nadia Myre, was performed in the large gallery called Espace américain. At the end of the exhibition was a roundtable in the centre of the same gallery, moderated by curator Anne-Marie Proulx…

Jessica Eaton, Colour Is a Verb – James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Essays
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Jessica Eaton

April 30, 2020 [originally published in CV105 in Winter 2017] — Jessica Eaton, a fast-rising star in the photographic world, has for some time now explored the notion of “colour is a verb” with rare verve, intensity, and thematic abandon. In her recent dovetailing series of works shown at Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran in Montreal as part of an exhibition aptly titled Transmutations, Eaton, already celebrated as a doyenne of colour theory…

Canadian Photography Magazines, 1970–1990. Reconsidering a History of Photography in Print – Zoë Tousignant

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…

Carl Trahan (C Joseph Wilfrid T), The Ethics of Assemblage – Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 104 - FROM ANOTHER ANGLE | Essays
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Carl Trahan

February 24, 2020 [originally published in CV104 in Fall 2016] — The arts were turned upside down by the advent of the internet and social media, and photography perhaps more than any other art. The uninterrupted flow of images on the Web creates both anxiety and saturation…

Robert Bean
, Notes on Études (for Marconi) – Robert Evans

Ciel variable 104 - FROM ANOTHER ANGLE | Essays
Authors: Robert Evans | Artists: Robert Bean

February 26, 2020 [originally published in CV104 in Fall 2016] — Robert Bean’s photographs in the series Études (for Marconi), though seemingly straightforward in content, continue the artist’s investigations of obsolescence, its myriad relationships with and the surprisingly malleable notions of past, present, and future, and their outcomes…

Bénédicte Ramade, The Edge of the Earth, Climate Change in Photography and Video – An interview by Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 104 - FROM ANOTHER ANGLE | Essays, Interviews
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade, Jacques Doyon

March 3, 2020 [originally published in CV104 in Fall 2016] — The Edge of the Earth focuses on contributions by various artists and journalists to the recognition and consideration of issues linked to climate change, with a particular emphasis on the chal­lenges posed by recognition of the central role played by humans in the disruption of their environment in what is now known as the Anthropocene Era.

Vox Populi 1985-1989, The origins of VOX, Ciel variable, and Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal – Marcel Blouin

Ciel variable 103 - NATURE | Essays
Authors: Marcel Blouin

December 11, 2019 [originally published in CV103 in Spring 2016] — It was Lucie Bureau who thought up the organization’s name. She was working at Radio Centre-Ville, a multilingual community radio station broadcasting from St. Lawrence Boulevard in Montreal. The name came to mind because she was producing “vox populi” pieces about social and cultural issues…

Bamako, A Biennale that Took the Time to Witness – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 103 - NATURE | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Coco Fusco, Em’kal Eyongakpa, George Mahashe, Georges Senga, Héla Ammar, J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Lebohang Kganye, Lola Khalfa, Moussa Kalapo, Seydou Camara, Sihem Salhi, Uche Okpa-Iroha, Youssef Lahrichi

December 16, 2019 [originally published in CV103 in Spring 2016] — The biennale in Bamako, Mali, came to an end on December 31, 2015. This anniversary edition – the tenth – had been delayed by two years due to a major crisis that occurred in 2012. Even a few weeks before the opening, there was still a climate of uncertainty, though it was quickly swept away by the invigorating enthusiasm of the organizing committee.

Ishiuchi Miyako, Stills of the Wounded: A North American Emergence – Claude Baillargeon

Ciel variable 103 - NATURE | Essays
Authors: Claude Baillargeon | Artists: Ishiuchi Miyako

December 18, 2019 [originally published in CV103 in Spring 2016] — Active since 1975 as a fiercely independent photographer in her native Japan, Ishiuchi Miyako has at last achieved significant recognition on the North American art scene…

PHotoEspaña 2015, Madrid.
 Open Veins – Views from Latin America – Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 102 - FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Ana Casas Broda, Janek Zamoyski, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Luis Arturo Aguirre, Luis González Palma, Martín Chambi, Ray Govea, Rodrigo Moya, Tina Modotti

October 9, 2019 [originally published in CV102 in Winter 2016] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal 2015, What Has Become of Photography in the Era of Mobile Technologies and Social Networks?
 – Élène Tremblay

Ciel variable 102 - FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE | Essays
Authors: Élène Tremblay

October 15, 2019 [originally published in CV102 in Winter 2016] — Curator Joan Fontcuberta’s idea of bringing together artists who explore the post-photographic condition for Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal is especially pertinent in an era in which digital technology has challenged the status of the photographic image…

Lagos, Nigeria: Capital of Photography – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 102 - FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis

October 16, 2019 [originally published in CV102 in Winter 2016] — Lagos – Eko in the Yoruba language – is a typical megalopolis. With its some twenty million inhabitants, it is the economic and cultural heart and soul of Nigeria, which is the birthplace of Wole Soyinka (Nobel Prize for literature) and Fela Kuti (the father of Afrobeat) and the home of Nollywood (the third-largest movie industry in the world)….

Douala under an Open Sky – Erika Nimis

Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Alessandro Aceri, Boris Nzebo, Christian Hanussek, Em’kal Eyongakpa, Ginette Daleu, Hervé Yamguen, Hervé Youmbi, Nicolas Eyidi, Patrick Wokmeni

July 31, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — Douala. Late January 2015. I take my first steps on the streets of this port city, the economic capital of Cameroon. Douala is a vibrant city that constantly eludes your grasp. First steps and already some reference points. We cannot speak of the contemporary scene in Douala without speaking of the art centres that form its identity.

Do the Clothes Make the Man? – Bénédicte Ramade

Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Essays
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade | Artists: Dana Claxton, Dayna Danger, Lori Blondeau, Meryl McMaster, Rosalie Favell, Shelley Niro, Skawennati, Terrance Houle

Dress codes categorize their users, signal their belonging to a social group: clothes worn in subcultures, from mods to punks,1 for example, act as symbols and incentives to resist normalcy and bourgeois society – considered, of course, to be coercive. In Indigenous cultures, artists have also appropriated clothes to resist the confinement of their representation […]

Beam me up, Scotty! The Photographs Teleported from Google Street View – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Essays
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Doug Rickard, Jon Rafman, Michael Wolf, Mishka Henner

August 5, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — It has been a few years now since artists discovered that they could put Google Street View to artistic and critical use. The best-known case is no doubt Jon Rafman, who is pursuing – inexorably, I might be tempted to say – his 9-eyes project, for which he shamelessly pillages the Internet image bank that contains pictures taken by directional cameras affixed to Google Street View (GSV) cars…

Michael Snow’s Bent: Image distortion in 1956 – Robert Fones

Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Essays
Authors: Robert Fones | Artists: Michael Snow

May 8, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — As a child, I learned from a book on cartooning that my mother bought me that a cartoon character’s body could be distorted or exaggerated to express astonishment or alarm. I vividly recall an illustration in the book of a character with eyes popped out, jaw dropped to the navel, and the whole body stretched vertically…

“Photo Season” at the MNBAQ: What Photography for the Museum? – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Bryan Adams, Geneviève Cadieux, Lida Moser

May 13, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — “The nineteenth-century dispute over the relative artistic merits of painting and photography seems misguided and confused today”. Does Walter Benjamin’s statement, dating from the 1930s, put a final stop to the debate over whether photography naturally belongs in museums?

BNLMTL 2014 : L’avenir (looking forward) – Louis Cummins, Geopolitics and Institutional Strategies

Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Essays
Authors: Louis Cummins | Artists: Abbas Akhavan, Emmanuelle Léonard, Étienne Tremblay-Tardif, Hito Steyerl, Jillian Mayer, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Lawrence Weiner, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ursula Biemann

May 15, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — By including artists such as Lawrence Weiner and Krzysztof Wodiczko, two pioneers of conceptual art who, in the late 1960s, combined art and social activism, the curators of the Biennale de Montréal 2014 clearly staked out their position…

PHotoEspaña 2014: Shining Light on Spanish Photography – Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Paco Gómez Martínez

March 4, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — “Mother and teacher mine, my sad and spacious Spain”: this is how the poet, Blas de Otero described his country’s vast geography and serial suffering under the double yoke of monarchy and religion, and then under fascism…

Forgotten Photography : The Case of Béla F. Egyedi – Zoë Tousignant

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…

Valérie Jouve, Five women from the country of the moon – Fabien Pinaroli

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Essays
Authors: Fabien Pinaroli | Artists: Valérie Jouve

March 11, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — For more than twenty years, in her encounters and the resulting portraits, Valérie Jouve has been navigating among reference points composed of historical markers such as architecture in peripheral zones, or the habituses of contemporary human beings…

Of Walking. A Photography and Thirdspace Paradigm – Philippe Guillaume

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Essays
Authors: Philippe Guillaume | Artists: Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand, Jim Campbell, Paulien Oltheten, Sohei Nishino

December 18, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — Karen Irvine, curator and museum associate director at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, recounted that it was after seeing Sohei Nishino’s work in Korea in 2010 and reading Rebecca Solnit that she had the idea for the Of Walking exhibition. Nishino is one of eight international contemporary artists whose works were in the show…

Revisiting History in Fragments: Three Recent Projects by Stan Douglas – Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Essays
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Stan Douglas

January 7, 2019 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — Stan Douglas’s earlier productions include Every Building on 100 West Hastings (2001), a nocturnal panorama of a block of buildings situated in a poor Vancouver neighbourhood, and the series of four photographs Crowds & Riots (2008), depicting recon­structions of crowd scenes and riots that took place in Vancouver during the twentieth century…

Unpacking Serge Clément’s Library – Zoë Tousignant

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…

Tacita Dean, Out of Time: A Seeing that Touches – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Tacita Dean

October 17, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — This was Winnicott’s response to the difficult challenge of reconciling oneself to one’s own temporality, a favoured problem for artists from On Kawara to Ann Hamilton to Tacita Dean. Artists have tended to handle this challenge in one of two ways: through an art practice that cultivates a relationship with the past or, conversely, by exploring new forms of subjectivity…

The Quebec Photobook, Thoughts on a History to Be Uncovered – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés

October 22, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — I discovered Marcel Cognac by chance – a chance presented to those who know how to wait for it, to those who want to understand something about their culture and their country. When I came across a copy of his book Visages du Québec, published in 1964, with text by Jean-Charles Harvey…

Family of Man | New Topographics, Audacity by Proxy : The Reiteration of Exhibitions – Bénédicte Ramade

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Essays
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade

October 24, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — The two last decades have seen the growth of a complex phenomenon: exhibition reproductions. A reprise produced as the inclusion of a “period room” doesn’t have the same effects as a complete restaging of a famous precedent in twentieth-century art history…

Letter to Paul Wombell, Post-scriptum and Afterthoughts About the Automated Image – Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Michael Snow

June 18, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — I had the pleasure of being invited by Chuck Samuels, the director of Le Mois de la photo à Montréal, to join Paul Wombell, the curator of Le Mois de la photo 2013, at the screening of art video shorts and a presentation of Michael Snow’s La région centrale (1970) at La Cinémathèque québécoise…

SITEGEIST II – L’ESPRIT DES LIEUX

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays

[Hiver 2014] New works created for the first Ciel variable fund-raising campaign following the first section of works published in the issue 94 of the magazine, in May 2013 This campaign is based on the idea of bringing together a collector and a photographer to create an original artwork on the theme “the spirit of […]

Les Rencontres d’Arles – Serge Allaire, Arles in Black

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays
Authors: Serge Allaire

August 8, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — Attending the inaugural week of the Rencontres is always a rather frenetic experience, with almost fifty exhibitions to see, as well as the associated programming and a three-day colloquium, not to mention the daily encounters and debates during which artists, curators, and critics comment on the exhibitions, and the evenings at the Théâtre antique. And then, there are the after-hours activities…

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…

CONTACT 2013 : FIELD OF VISION – Jill Glessing, Expanding our Field with Contact Festival

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Adam Broomberg, Andrew Wright, Arnaud Maggs, Marie Cosindas, Marlene Creates, Meryl McMaster, Oliver Chanarin, Robert Flaherty, Sebastião Salgado

August 15, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — In its fifteenth year, Contact, the world’s largest photography festival, offered an expanded schedule of photography-based adventures that included films, workshops, 174 exhibitions, and a three-day symposium featuring international curators and critics. Following a line-up that included Geoffrey Batchen and Joel Snyder…

Lynne Cohen, False Clues: Space Within Place – Philippe Guillaume

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Philippe Guillaume | Artists: Lynne Cohen

May 9, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — Lynne Cohen’s recent exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal presents much more than a display of captivating and masterful large-size photographs of interior spaces. At first glance, False Clues could be described as an imposing photographic project documenting ordinary interior spaces. However, the titles of the twenty-five chromogenic prints and fifteen gelatin-silver prints selected for the show (like those of most of her photographs) discourage any documentary connotation…

Donald McCullin, Collision, Helen Doyle, Representing War and Social Conflicts? – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Bertrand Carrière, Donald McCullin, Helen Doyle, Michael Mitchell

May 14, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — By a strange coincidence, two exhibitions – a Donald McCullin retrospective and Collision: Conflict and Its Consequences – at the National Gallery of Canada, as well as a film, Dans un océan d’images, featured at the recent International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) in Montreal, have presented a wide range of practices related to how photographs portray war and social conflict…

John Gossage, The Photobook: Reflections on Several Recent Projects – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: John Gossage

May 16, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — If there is one category that seems to have escaped the crisis in the book-publishing sector engendered by the rise of digital publishing, it is photobooks, which are currently appearing at such a rate that it is legitimate to think they will eventually supplant exhibitions as the main means of dissemination of photography and, especially, photographic creativity…

SITEGEIST – THE SPIRIT OF A PLACE – Ciel variable’s first fund-raising campaign

Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Artists: Alain Paiement, Angela Grauerholz, Chuck Samuels, Gabor Szilasi

[Spring/summer 2013] Works created for the first Ciel variable fund-raising campaign This campaign is based on the idea of bringing together a collector and a photographer to create an original artwork on the theme “the spirit of a place” – a place selected by the collector and interpreted by the artist. The exercise offers a […]

Omer Fast, Continuous Coverage – Blake Fitzpatrick

Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Blake Fitzpatrick | Artists: Omer Fast

March 14, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — Omer Fast is not a documentarian, but his solo exhibition at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery did draw attention to the strategies of an artist working, as Jeff Wall put it, “near documentary.” Spanning the last decade, the exhibition referenced sites of recent global conflict with three video works that quoted documentary or journalistic convention…

Anticoste of Richard Baillargeon, Fragments for a History – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Richard Baillargeon

March 19, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — Richard Baillargeon’s Anticoste is presented as a complex composition of heterogeneous materials organized in groups to create vast networks of significances, echoes, and resonances and to constitute a reflection both on the history of Anticosti and on the narrative processes implemented in knowledge and the relationship with the past.

C.1983. The Role of Photography in Memory, Mass Culture and illusion – Karen Henry

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Essays
Authors: Karen Henry | Artists: Henri Robideau

November 6, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Who would have thought that the 1980s were such a stimulating time. There is so much emphasis in cultural memory on the 1960s and 1970s that it seemed like it was all over by the 1980s – but not so, as revealed in the two-part exhibition on photography in Vancouver c. 1983…

Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie 2012 – Jean-François Nadeau

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Essays
Authors: Jean-François Nadeau | Artists: Beatrix von Conta, Gabor Szilasi, Guillaume D. Cyr, Jocelyne Alloucherie, Martin Beaulieu, Maryse Goudreau, Yana Ouellet

December 18, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Paul Graham : In the Present – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Paul Graham

October 12, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — This spring, the Pace Gallery in New York, a temple to photography since the early 1980s, had a show of recent works by English photographer Paul Graham in one of its locations in the Chelsea neighbourhood. The Present, the works which have also been published in a book by the English publisher MACK, is the third part of a photographic trilogy begun at the turn of the century with American Night (1998–2002), followed by the ambitious series A Shimmer of Possibility (2004–06)…

Taryn Simon, Foiling the Truth: The Effects of the Real and Fictional in Documentary Photography – Mirna Boyadjian

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Essays
Authors: Mirna Boyadjian | Artists: Taryn Simon

October 16, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Howard Becker wrote an essay called “Do Photographs Tell the Truth?” in 1986, and the question still seems pertinent. Although today we admit that the photographic image constitutes a (re)construction of the world and not a reproduction of reality, a certain legalistic conception of photographs tends to be maintained…

Chronicles of a Disappearance : Seeing What Disappears – Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Essays
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: José Toirac, Omer Fast, Philippe Parreno, Taryn Simon

October 18, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Sometimes, thanks to a curator’s insight, a group exhibition be comes a work of art in itself. This is the case for “Chronicles of a Disappearance,” in which John Zeppetelli not only presents five artworks of an extraordinary density but, in bringing them together, weaves networks of meaning that greatly strengthen each artwork.

David Askevold, Disorientation Artist – Robert Evans

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Essays
Authors: Robert Evans | Artists: David Askevold

August 9, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — David Askevold’s work is variously labelled as post-minimal, conceptual, narrative, story art, and post-movement, although none of these is adequate. Westerns, country-and-western music, poltergeists, ghosts, spirits, games, rules, narratives, dreams, history, geography, scientific imaging, and anthropology all inform his work. The list of materials and approaches with which he worked is similarly eclectic…

Springtime of South African Photography – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis

August 14, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — A number of events (exhibitions, publications, and awards) have recently highlighted the growing success of South African photography on the international contemporary scene. Since the abolition of apartheid, and then the election of Nelson Mandela as president of the country in 1994, South Africa has become the spearhead of contemporary African photography, reinforced by a long and rich history that begins with the invention of photography itself, imported to Cape Town in the 1840s.¹…

Nadia Seboussi, Le dernier été de la raison – Pierre Rannou, Looking Back at the Image

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Essays
Authors: Pierre Rannou | Artists: Nadia Seboussi

August 16, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — When we enter the exhibition space at the UQAM gallery, what we see first are two television screens with headphone sets, and then we see two more screens on the wall to the right. As we continue to look around, we note the large-format photocopies of newspaper front pages on two of the four walls and, standing alone on the left side of the exhibition space, a pedestal on which a book sits…

Le BAL: A New Photographic Institution in France? – Michel Poivert

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: Michel Poivert

April 3, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — We present an analysis of the context and strategic positionings that prevailed at the foundation of bal, a French photography institution with its roots in the field of independent press agencies. Although such a reality does not have its equivalent here, Michel Poivert’s viewpoints on the emergence of institutions, the recognition of documentary photography, and the issues in visual media education provide an interesting perspective on the initiatives taken by, and shortcomings of our institutions with regard to photographic issues.

Lucidity. Inward Views. Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal – René Viau

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: René Viau

May 17, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — Bringing together twenty-six artists under the title Lucidity. Inward Views, the twelfth edition of Le Mois de la photo à Montréal made the theme that served as its title, if not a template for comprehension, the pivot of its articulations. Through the works in this dense, enriching event, a strongly subjective vision was proposed to viewers. For the artists, “interrogating the world goes hand in hand with interrogating oneself (and vice versa),” according to event curator Anne-Marie Ninacs.¹

La Biennale di Venezia 2011 – Alice Ming Wai Jim

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: Alice Ming Wai Jim

May 22, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — “Navinland needs YOU,” according to the s.w.a.g. (souvenirs, wearables, and gifts) cum recruitment material of Thai artist of Indian descent Navin Rawanchaikul’s latest staging of his fledgling non-nation. Set up in a bar and restaurant at the entrance to the Giardini, where the permanent national pavilions of the Venice Biennale have been since 1885, Paradiso di Navin: A Mission to Establish Navinland is a parody as astute as it is amusing of the year’s theme of ILLUMInations.

Serge Emmanuel Jongué, Capturing and Narrating the Unspeakable – Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Serge Emmanuel Jongué

May 24, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — The name Serge Emmanuel Jongué (who died in 2006) was not unknown in the photographic community. In his important essay titled “The New Photographic Order,” published in 1990,¹ Jongué cast a lucid eye on the issues in Quebec documentary photography in the 1970s. His reinterpretation of the official discourse attached to this photographic school has become a classic for those interested in the history and comprehension of Quebec photographic practices.

Hervé Guibert, The Image of Words – Franck Michel

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Essays
Authors: Franck Michel | Artists: Hervé Guibert

March 7, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — From 9 February to 10 April 2011, the Maison européenne de la photographie in Paris presented the first-ever retrospective of the works of photographer and writer Hervé Guibert, comprising some 230 images.¹ I had a chance to visit the exhibition on a weekday morning when the museum opened, so I was just about alone in the galleries (something rare at this museum).

John Max: The Vertigo of the Free Gaze – Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Essays
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: John Max, Michel Lamothe

March 9, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — In John Max, a portrait, Michel Lamothe proves that an attentive gaze trained on the other may be transmuted into a deep meditation. To create this work, which is as fluid as a fiction film, Lamothe followed the photographer John Max for three years (from 2000 to 2003), accumulating 40 hours of footage – film that he spent months pruning and then editing, in collaboration with Louise Dugal…

Leaping Forward: The Montreal Museum of Fine Art’s New Photographic Collecting Practices – Zoë Tousignant

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.

Making Light: The Emergence of Modernist Photography in Quebec Revealed – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Albert Dumouchel, Conrad Tremblay, Gordon Webber, Guy Borremans, Jauran, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Jean-Pierre Beaudin, Omer Parent, Rodolphe de Repentigny

March 16, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — There are still many gaps in our knowledge of the history of Quebec photography. I realized this after seeing “Photographes rebelles à l’époque de la Grande Noirceur (1937-1961),” which was held at Maison Hamel-Bruneau in Quebec City. Devoted to photography during the Duplessis era, the exhibition comprised about eighty works…

Bernd & Hilla Becher: Reading Between the Grids – Philippe Guillaume

Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Essays
Authors: Philippe Guillaume | Artists: Bernd & Hilla Becher

December 13, 2016 [originally published in CV88, Spring 2011] — When we think of the work of Bernhard and Hilla Becher, a classical eighteenth-century mansion, pristine gardens where Madame de Staël walked, and a spectacular landscape overlooking a lake with the Alps as backdrop is hardly the scene that comes to mind. Strikingly different from the industrial landscapes that captivated the photographers during the second half of the twentieth century, this locale, the Musée de l’Elysée, is the setting for the latest exhibition of their work.

Doina Popescu. Envisioning the Ryerson Gallery and Research Centre – Claude Baillargeon

Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Essays
Authors: Claude Baillargeon

December 15, 2016 [originally published in CV88, Spring 2011] — For the last few years, the campus of Ryerson University in downtown Toronto has been abuzz with the redesign and expansion of the School of Image Arts to accommodate the emerging Ryerson Gallery and Research Centre. Slated to open in fall 2012, this major facility is intended to become an international centre dedicated to photography and related media. To learn more about this ambitious project and the evolving vision guiding it, Ciel variable met with Doina Popescu, who is overseeing the endeavour as its initial director.

Pierre Gaudard, Documentary Photographer – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Pierre Gaudard

December 20, 2016 [originally published in CV88, Spring 2011] — Pierre Gaudard is one of the rare photographers whose photographs are not on the Web. Absent from the photography scene since the mid-1980s because he returned to France and because of the gradual disappearance of the documentary genre from institutions devoted to photography, his name was suddenly resurrected in a press release announcing his death…

Performance Images, Image Performances – Anne Bénichou

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Anne Bénichou

August 1, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — In 2004, at Dazibao, “Performance et photographie: Point and Shoot” explored the close connections between performance and photography. In this exhibition, performance images were envisaged beyond their documentary function, as works in their own right. In 2007, the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery at Concordia University presented “9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theatre, and Engineering, 1966,” an exhibition devoted to the eponymous evening of experimental performances held in New York in 1966…

Re-creating Danse dans la neige – Mario Côté

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Mario Côté | Artists: Françoise Sullivan

August 3, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — In October 2005, my chance meeting with the multidisciplinary artist Françoise Sullivan at the café of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels led to the idea of reviving, almost sixty years later, an early masterpiece of modern dance: Danse dans la neige.

Rearticuling Performance on SecondLife – Cyril Thomas

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Cyril Thomas | Artists: Eva et Franco Mattes, Joseph DeLappe, Lynn Hershman Leeson

August 8, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — It is obvious – given the statements and actions of the SecondLife Liberation Army, the 3D reconfiguration of the Guantanamo prison filmed by Nonny de la Peña, Liberate Your Avatar by Paul Sermon, works by Agnès de Cayeux, and the productions of Nicolas Boone – that SecondLife, created by LindenLabs, is a territory and space that is widely used by artists, filmmakers, playwrights, and musicians…

Archives of Inspiration – Barbara Clausen

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Barbara Clausen | Artists: Daniel Guzman, Kelly Walker, Luis Felipe Ortega, Seth Price

August 10, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — A man walks into frame and presses his body into a corner. The camera zooms in on him as he forces his entire body into the confines of the triangular space that he has created. He shifts his hips and squeezes his arms and hands into the small space left between his body and the corner. His movements are slight, yet strenuous; there is a sexual, yet suppressed, almost violent tension in his striving to be absorbed by the architecture.

Animating the Document, Performing the Spectator: Tim Clark, Reading the Limits, 2008. – David Tomas

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: David Tomas | Artists: Tim Clark

August 15, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — Tim Clark. Reading the Limits” was produced by the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery at Concordia University. On one level, the exhibition was a retrospective devoted to Tim Clark, a Montreal-based performance artist who produced a series of important works between 1977 and 2003. On another level, it was designed to reopen the question of the contemporary status of the artist and the interstitial – post-1970s/contemporary academic – function of the artwork…

Guest editor : Anne Bénichou

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Anne Bénichou

[Fall 2010] documents [de] PERFORMANCE Historic performances are currently being updated in different forms: exhibitions, appropriations, remediations, and re-enactments. These practices raise a number of questions about the status of performance documentation (photos, videos, and films in particular) and how it is interpreted, adressed here through multiple recent examples. DAVID TOMAS Tim Clark. Reading the […]

Stan Douglas, Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 – Karen Henry

Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Essays, Portfolios
Authors: Karen Henry | Artists: Stan Douglas

May 16, 2016 [originally published in Summer 2010] — The impressive piece of public art addresses the very nature of public space. It is named after the two streets that cross at the north corner of the Woodward’s building, on which the artwork is installed. The image inhabits space like a sculpture, grandly overlooking the public and private courtyards of the new complex in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Andreas Gursky : Werke/Works 80-08 – John K. Grande

Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Essays
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Andreas Gursky

[Spring 2010] by John K. Grande Andréas Gursky’s incredible take on the contemporary has much to do with the ascent of photography in the contemporary art world. And yet Gursky, as much as any photographier, is to be credited for raising that profile, thanks to his monumental photographic images. It is therefore ironic that for […]

Haunting Images: On Joachim Koester’s Photographic Works – Maxime Coulombe

Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Essays
Authors: Maxime Coulombe | Artists: Joachim Koester

[Fall 2009] Joachim Koester photographs, and sometimes films, invisible events. Since the mid-1990s, he has sought out places that history seems to have touched, then deserted, and finally left to fade away. He sees himself as an archaeologist of the intangible, and thus he asks a question both beautiful and disturbing: Once an event is […]

Magazines and the Making of Photographic Modernism in Canada – Zoë Tousignant

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 […]

In Defense of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography – Martha Langford

Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Martha Langford

[Summer 2009] The National Gallery of Canada (NGC), under the direction of Marc Mayer, has recently announced that the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP) will no longer occupy its building at 1 Rideau Canal. In fact, the building will no longer be a public space for the arts. It has been handed over to […]

Photography: Too Fragile for the Public Patrimony? – Stéphane Bouchard

Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Stéphane Bouchard

[Summer 2009] by Stéphane Bouchard Of all the creative support programs, Quebec’s policy for the integration of the arts with architecture and the environment (commonly known as the 1 percent program) offers some of the best visibility, as well as terrific financial support, to artists. This program allots unequalled sums to bring contemporary art into […]

Negotiating the Collection in the Street : Reading the McCord Museum’s Outdoor Interventions – Johanna Mizgala

Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Brian Merrett, David Miller, Laurie Kang, Louise Abbott, Nicholas Hoban, Notman & Sandham, William Notman, William Notman & Son, Zoe Yuristy

[Summer 2009] Relevance is a word that permeates discussions about the role of museums within the social fabric of community. As repositories, museums have a primary function of cultivation not only of objects but also of a public to engage with them. Museums amass, describe, preserve, and, ultimately, display facets of their contents, arranged and […]

At Play in the Frame – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Ken Lum, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Rebecca Belmore

[Summer 2009] In Montreal, as in many cities around the world, works of art have often been placed in “public” urban spaces. In some cases, the placement of works is accomplished through channels of bureaucratic control or corporate interest, while in other cases artists have thought of their actions as interventions in those spheres, even […]

The City: Always Already Photographic . . . – Suzanne Paquet

Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Suzanne Paquet | Artists: Jean-François Cantin, Ken Lum, Michel Lemieux, Nicolas Baier, Thomas Kneubühler, Victor Pilon

[Summer 2009] The world identifies with the quintessence of photographs. This identification does not occur for no reason. For the world itself is composed of a photographic face. . . . the world has become the photographic present, and the photographic present is fully perpetuated. ⎯ Siegfried Kracauer, 19271 Although photographs are generally flat, they […]

The Private Photo Albums of Hugh Le Caine – Alexandre Robertson

Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Essays
Authors: Alexandre Robertson | Artists: Hughes Le Caine

[Spring 2009] “… a change in time is enough to re-create the world and ourselves.” — Marcel ProustDespite his pioneering role in the development of musique concrète, Hugh Le Caine (1914–77), a well-known physicist, inventor of electronic musical instruments, and self-taught composer, remains a relatively obscure figure: information about him is limited almost exclusively to […]

Remains and Disappearances The Work of Oscar Muñoz – Elizabeth Matheson

Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Essays
Authors: Elizabeth Matheson | Artists: Oscar Muñoz

[Spring 2009] We live in an age of disappearances, a time of loss and change, with mass extinctions and vanishing eco-regions. These profound, sinister planetary transformations remind us of the intimate link between ourselves and our actions in the visible world. Yet it seems as if this rapid unravelling has left us dumb with dread and […]

39e Rencontres d’Arles, Christian Lacroix et ses invités : un regard anthropologique sur la photographie de mode – Serge Allaire

Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Essays
Authors: Serge Allaire

[Fall 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

The weight of photographic history: THE YVES BEAUREGARD COLLECTION – Zoë Tousignant

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 […]