Archives

Joan Fontcuberta, Trauma – Sylvain Campeau, Autopsy of a Disappearance

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Joan Fontcuberta

January 11, 2021 [originally published in CV107 in Fall 2017] — In his work, Joan Fontcuberta explores the effects of the real and the capacity for truth generated by the technological image, in order to denounce the authoritarian discourses regarding information and knowledge. His other subjects include nature and the functions of the image in digital culture.

André Barrette, Fin de Siglo – Alexis Desgagnés, Fin de siècle in Cuba

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Portfolios
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: André Barrette

January 18, 2021 [originally published in CV107 in Fall 2017] — André Barrette likely never wanted his art in the spotlight. That is why, outside of the community of artist-run centres in Quebec City, relatively little is known about his discreet but important contribution to Quebec photography landscape in recent decades.

Michel Campeau, The Donkey that Became a Zebra : histoires de chambre noire – Joan Fontcuberta, Fire, Prayers and the Place of Photography

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Portfolios
Authors: Joan Fontcuberta | Artists: Michel Campeau

January 25, 2021 [originally published in CV107 in Fall 2017] — Just when we thought we had all the answers to the enigma of our memory fixed in silver salts, life – without so much as a by-your-leave – changed the questions. Perhaps because life is not a problem to be solved, as Søren Kierkegaard said, but a reality to be experienced…

Ruins

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Portfolios
Artists: André Barrette, Joan Fontcuberta, Michel Campeau

[Fall 2017 ] — Thematic Introduction

Three Moments of Ruin

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2017 ] — Editorial of Ciel variable 105 – Ruins

Ciel variable 107 – RUINS

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS

[Fall 2017] The artists whose works are brought together here under the theme of ruins are interested in capturing the traces of a disappearing world, a world in which the evolution of the photographic image is symptomatic of a more fundamental transformation of culture and social values as a whole. EDITORIAL PORTFOLIOS FOCUS EXHIBITIONS […]

Luce Lebart, Canadian Photography Institute (CPI) – Carol Payne

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Interviews
Authors: Carol Payne, Luce Lebart

May 19, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — In late 2016, Luce Lebart was appointed the first director of the Canadian Photography Institute at the National Gallery of Canada. For the previous five years, she had been director of collections and curator at the Société Française de Photographie (SFP) in Paris, one of the oldest and most esteemed institutions devoted to photography in the world…

Sarker Protick et Katrin Koenning, Astres noirs – Louis Perreault

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Book Reviews
Authors: Louis Perreault

May 21, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Le livre photographique : un état des lieux – Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Book Reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim

[Spring-Summer 2017] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Paris Photo, Offprint et Polycopies par Mona Hakim (French only) [See the printed or digital version of the magazine for the complete article.] Purchase this article

Manon Labrecque – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Manon Labrecque

May 26, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Matthieu Brouillard – Jean-Pierre Vidal

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-Pierre Vidal | Artists: Matthieu Brouillard

June 2, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Fiona Annis, Les révolutions sidérales – James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Fiona Annis

June 9, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — In the photoworks in this exhibition, Fiona Annis dilated with poetic acuity on the clockwork of the heavens. She mined resources as varied and recondite as the first spectroscopic data on the trajectory of Halley’s Comet, recorded in 1910, and Binary Stars: A Pictorial Atlas, 1992…

Leila Alaoui – Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Leila Alaoui

June 20, 2017 [originally published in French in CV106 in Spring 2017] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

James Welling, Chronology – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: James Welling

June 16, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — This exhibition presented a selection of work from Welling’s early days in the 1970s and from recent production. The artist’s principal interests lie in the area of photographic materiality and some of its attendant themes – colour, technologies, and abstraction – and to the social relations inherent in the production and circulation of photographs…

Jacynthe Carrier – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Jacynthe Carrier

June 18, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

La Biennale de Montréal – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis

June 23, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Robert Mapplethorpe – Philippe Guillaume

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Philippe Guillaume | Artists: Robert Mapplethorpe

June 25, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — The Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition Focus Perfection, which opened last fall at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, was a lavish retrospective dedicated to the controversial New York artist who took up photography in 1970 with a borrowed Polaroid camera…

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…

Denis Farley, Espaces aériens – Daniel Fiset, Photographs Like Clouds

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Portfolios
Authors: Daniel Fiset | Artists: Denis Farley

September 1, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — Espaces aériens marks a turning point in Farley’s aesthetic, developed since the 1980s, of working mainly in documentation of landscape and architecture. In this series, he gradually abandons horizontal composition and aims his lens upward, letting layers of clouds dictate the composition and perturb the unified reading…

Alain Lefort, Eidôlon – Francine Paul, Hunting for Landscapes in the Spring of Glacial Figures

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Portfolios
Authors: Francine Paul | Artists: Alain Lefort

September 8, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — Since 2010, Lefort’s photographic series have evidenced his desire to go to increasingly remote regions alone to photograph natural phenomena; most recently, he has been intrigued by icebergs, huge in both dimensions and appeal…

Jocelyn Philibert, Arbres – Franck Michel, The Depths of the Landscape

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Portfolios
Authors: Franck Michel | Artists: Jocelyn Philibert

September 15, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — For more than ten years, Jocelyn Philibert has been photographing trees at night. This near-obsession was triggered during a summer spent in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, on the bank of the St. Lawrence River. Having just acquired a small digital camera, he decided to go out and explore the vicinity of his cottage, photographing everything around him, after the sun went down…

TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Portfolios
Artists: Alain Lefort, Denis Farley, Jocelyn Philibert

At first glance, the works presented here might seem to be simply about work on a motif. A more attentive look, however, shows that what is indicated here, in this focus on trees, or icebergs, or clouds, is the shaping of natural elements by human action on a landscape that has become an environment. Jocelyn […]

Metonymic Motifs

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Alain Lefort, Denis Farley, Jocelyn Philibert

Each series of images in this issue presents, in a way, work on a motif – a live view of the landscape, in the tradition of landscape painters. Capturing the infinite variations of trees, icebergs, or clouds under different conditions certainly testifies to an interest in nature, but perhaps even more in how it is […]

Ciel variable 106 – TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS

[Spring-Summer 2017] At first glance, the works presented here might seem to be simply about work on a motif. A more attentive look, however, shows that what is indicated here, in this focus on trees, or icebergs, or clouds, is the shaping of natural elements by human action on a landscape that has become […]

Hélène Samson, Exhibiting Notman – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Interviews
Authors: Hélène Samson, Jacques Doyon | Artists: William Notman

March 18, 2020 [originally published in CV105 in Winter 2017] — Hélène Samson has been the curator of the photography collection at the McCord Museum since 2006. She is interested in collecting vernacular Canadian photographs and updating nineteenth-century photographic archives…

New and Worthy

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Book Reviews

[Winter 2017] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. [See the printed or digital version of the magazine for the complete article.] Download this article (Free of charge)