[Fall 2021]

The thematic section in this issue presents three exhibitions that show how photography can actively contribute to shaping a critical vision of the world. By bringing together a large number of images and points of view, the first sets out to offer an overall sense of the changes affecting global civilization. Inspired by Jean Baudrillard’s notion of the “total screen,” the second contrasts traditional photography and its mutant, digital, and interactive form, which augments the real at the scale of a screen interface. The third highlights the career of a photography critic whose vision is fed by his encounter with the works he has collected and their creators, while being attentive to the development of a photographic community.

CIVILIZATION – QUELLE ÉPOQUE !
Curators: William A. Ewing et Holly Roussell

This ambitious exhibition, which brings together some two hundred works by over a hundred photographers from five continents, sets out to give an overview of the great transformations now sweeping across the entire planet. Eight thematic sections offer a comprehension of the vectors of an accelerated transformation of the world that make the fate of the great majority of human beings interdependent with and subjugated to a single technological rationality, a single civili­ zational aim.
With an essay by Julie Martin

ÉCRAN TOTAL
Curators: Amandine Alessandra, Marine Baudrillard, Carole Lévesque, Katharina Niemeyer et Magali Uhl

This exhibition is part of an academic research project that brought participants together to engage in a reflection instigated by Jean Baudrillard around the notion of the “total screen.” As a counterpoint to Baudrillard’s own photographs, the exhibition presents a series of multimedia works commenting on the omnipresence of the screen, as a virtual representation of the world, and its impacts on contemporary life.
With an essay by Edward Pérez-­González

THREE MONTRÉAL PHOTOGRAPHERS +
Commissaire / curator: Robert Graham

This exhibition, an initiative by the critic and collector Robert Graham, summarizes a singular career that closely combines the acquisition of targeted photographic works and spending time with the photographers in the process of developing a critical vision of photog­ raphy. Through the detailed comments made by Graham in the catalogue, the show also offers an overview of the organic evolution of the local photography scene.
With an essay by Zoë Tousignant