Landscapes as Mirrors – Ciel variable Magazine

[Winter 2021]

What do the most distant, wild, silent landscapes tell us? How do landscapes of our childhood, those that awoke us to the world, shape us? What reflections of our own future do we find in the chaos of urban sites? Landscapes are like mirrors, utterly shaped by human presence. The city is a direct extension of the social body and, similarly, all of nature is a construction of culture that becomes meaningful only through the human gaze.

ALAIN LEFORT
Résonance des silences
A reflection of our times. Drawn to landscapes of water, ice, and snow, Alain Lefort is always returning to the most remote regions of Quebec. The series Résonance des silences, though dazzling, is also a critique of our presence in the world, and of supposed photographic objectivity. The silver prints, photomontages, and videos taken from his stays in Nunavik are marked, concretely or metaphorically, by the human imprint.
with an essay by Yannick Marcoux

CHLOÉ BEAULAC
Ces lieux qui nous habitent
Mirror images. Impelled, thanks to a photographic mission, to travel through the region of her childhood – the Laurentians – Chloé Beaulac draws on both what appears before her eyes and her memories. From this path between idealized visions and brutal views of reality, she created digitally altered images. The compositions betray nothing, do not lie. Celebrating a landscape, they are offered as a mirror of our connection with nature – which we idealize but also alter, which impresses us but also appropriated by us.
with an essay by Dominique Sirois-Rouleau

DAVID K. ROSS Children of Kaos
Present echoes. The images in the Children of Kaos series arise from a gaze that is critical, if not cynical. The visual over- production that characterizes our times and the resulting overconsumption are themselves a common target. David K. Ross’s approach, however, takes a detour through antiquity, especially in the titles of his works. The distance between these references and the content of his images inspired author Jeanne Randolph to undertake an amazing, animated dialogue that underlines the twisted use of mythology in advertising.
with an essay by Jeanne Randolph

See the magazine for complete articles and more images: Ciel variable 116 – LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS