[Fall 1994]
Serge Clément, Cité fragile,
Montréal, Vox Populi, 1992, 60 pp., ill. b. & w., stapled, $30.
Over the past two decades, documentary photography has come to be looked upon with a certain amount of uneasiness and mistrust. Time and again it has been disgraced, notably by Martha Rossler and Alan Sekula, who rebuked the unequal rapport it fosters between the photographer and his or her subjects. The former, seen as a new colonizer, and the latter, often exotic, converted by the medium and its internal logic into objects. With Itinéraires 1987-1992, presented during Montreal’s Mois de la Photo 1992, Serge Clément transcends the strictly documentary tradition. Exploring the limits of its genre, this series offers an amalgam of fact and fiction. Comprising three distinct sections – cité de terre, cité de pierre, cité fragile – with sensitively written texts by François Jalbert, this book functions almost as a travel log of Latin America. The virtuosity of Clement’s work is to have photographed the poetry of daily life. While revealing the artist’s personal approach, the photographs are nonetheless a testimony to a strong cultural presence in Latin America: death. These on the spot images portray recurring rites and funerary grounds, solitary strollers and mortuary symbols. The book’s careful edition and presentation contributes to the ease with which the viewer/reader is able to be absorbed by an introspective voyage.
Michel Campeau, Éclipses et Labyrinthes,
Chicoutimi, Séquence, 1993, 32 pp., ill. b. & w., stapled, $20.
In 1988, Michel Campeau published Les tremblements du cœur, a series of meditative images on the mechanisms of memory, on childhood memories and the traces they leave behind. Eclipses et Labyrinthes calls forth a similar theme: personal imagery into which negative “televisual” images are set. While in the previous series the negative images were by photographers having inspired Campeau, in this album the negative images are by Campeau himself. Here, the use of negatives that double an image already present in the project represents a symbolic restructuring of memory as well as an assertion of the author as photographer. In comparison to his 1988 publication, Campeau’s latest album is all the more impressive due to the meticulous formatting of images framed in grey. Referring back to the exhibition corresponding to this catalogue, Jean Arrouye remarks upon the interplay between text and images. He elucidates an understanding of the relations between memory, history (both official and personal), and the act of remembering, where “the taking of the photograph becomes the coming to consciousness.” In fact, the album’s title attests to Campeau’s difficulty with remembering; photography is his Ariadne’s clew, and nostalgia faces the screen of oblivion.
André Goldberg, Portraits-fétiches,
Montréal, Vox Populi, 1992, 60 pp., ill. b. & w., stapled, $30.
Over the past two decades, documentary photography has come to be looked upon with a certain amount of uneasiness and mistrust. Time and again it has been disgraced, notably by Martha Rossler and Alan Sekula, who rebuked the unequal rapport it fosters between the photographer and his or her subjects. The former, seen as a new colonizer, and the latter, often exotic, converted by the medium and its internal logic into objects. With Itinéraires 1987-1992, presented during Montreal’s Mois de la Photo 1992, Serge Clément transcends the strictly documentary tradition. Exploring the limits of its genre, this series offers an amalgam of fact and fiction. Comprising three distinct sections – cité de terre, cité de pierre, cité fragile – with sensitively written texts by François Jalbert, this book functions almost as a travel log of Latin America. The virtuosity of Clement’s work is to have photographed the poetry of daily life. While revealing the artist’s personal approach, the photographs are nonetheless a testimony to a strong cultural presence in Latin America: death. These on the spot images portray recurring rites and funerary grounds, solitary strollers and mortuary symbols. The book’s careful edition and presentation contributes to the ease with which the viewer/reader is able to be absorbed by an introspective voyage.
La photographie comme destruction,
Jean Arrouye et al., Arles, ENP & U. de Provence, 1993, 91 pp., ill. b. & w., stapled, $26,95
We are presented with a body of seemingly heterogeneous photographs grouped according to a common principle or onto-logical concept: destruction. In eight different essays, the authors – all specialists of photography or the image – analyze the relation between photography and the varying degrees of destruction it engenders. They are of the opinion that “photography, rather than preserving the real, first proceeds to its destruction”, then proposes a new real. Along with a general discussion on understanding photography and its ability to subvert identity, the authors reflect upon the notion of identity as processed in automatic photo booths; the photo-essay in its generic sense; the image bank of the FSA; a few photographs by Diane Arbus, and more. In light of what is discussed here, it would no doubt be interesting to look again at the portfolios of Donigan Cumming, Andres Serrano , Nicole Jolicoeur and others; as destruction is inherent in the photographic medium.
Translated by Jennifer Couëlle