Michel Saint-Jean. When Documentary Takes a Side— Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

[Summer 2022] By Pierre Dessureault [Excerpt] In the 1960s and 1970s, Quebec was experiencing a radical revision of all kinds of models that had previously been seen as immutable. This major transformation swept away obsolete institutions and fossilized ways of thinking inherited from the Great Darkness of the Duplessis period and laid claim to a […]

Terror Contagion. Surveilling the Surveillance — Edward Pérez-González

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Essays
Authors: Edward Pérez-González

[Summer 2022] By Edward Pérez-González [Excerpt] It was with my head full of the rave reviews I’d read in the local press – “a show that sends shivers down your spine,” “a blood-curdling exhibition” – that I went to the temporary site of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC), in Place Ville Marie, to […]

Prospectus for a Future History of Quebec Photography — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée

[Summer 2022] By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] When we try to reach a better understanding of the history of photography in Quebec, we inevitably stumble into three common areas. The first is absence: so, where is this reference book that everyone’s waiting for and no one has written yet? And yet, there are books on the […]

Meryl Mcmaster, As Immense as the Sky — Lori Beavis, The Beginning of Something New

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Portfolios
Authors: Lori Beavis | Artists: Meryl McMaster

[Summer 2022] By Lori Beavis [Excerpt] I want to plunge into the storage space where Meryl McMaster stores the habiliments that she has created for her performative photographic practice. While there I could closely investigate the cloaks, patterned coats, feathered armbands, hand wraps, plumed plant material, and bird-festooned headwear. Over the past fifteen years, McMaster […]

Jeff Thomas, Indians on Tour — Carolyn Hickey, The Indigenous Map Maker’s Room

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Portfolios
Authors: Carolyn Hickey | Artists: Jeff Thomas

[Summer 2022] An interview conducted by Carolyn Hickey [Extrait] The exhibition The Indigenous Map Maker’s Room at the Latcham Art Centre1 resurfaced Jeff Thomas’s series Indians on Tour, which he began some twenty years ago. The series has continued to evolve and has generated other, parallel series. In this interview conducted by Carolyn Hickey, the […]

Dana Claxton, Portraits & Regalia — Skeena Reece, It’s Love or a Photograph

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Portfolios
Authors: Skeena Reece | Artists: Dana Claxton

[Summer 2022] It’s Love or a Photograph – Depends on How You See It By Skeena Reece [Excerpt] The Mustang Suite is a series about more than mobility. Though that’s a great place to start, to introduce you to Dana Claxton’s works; images that include literal modes of transportation are a part of the photographs’ […]

Figures of Affirmation

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Portfolios
Artists: Dana Claxton, Jeff Thomas, Meryl McMaster

[Summer 2022] Indigenous culture has long been oppressed in this country, but strong proud voices are now speaking out in public and are increasingly being heard. Here, we present three of these voices: they stand out for their use of photography as a central vehicle of their approach. Together, they offer a renewed vision of […]

Visible Everywhere

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Dana Claxton, Jeff Thomas, Meryl McMaster

[Summer 2022] By Jacques Doyon Indigenous peoples have been confined to reservations, cut off from their ancestral lands, subjected to forced assimilation in schools, and had their status denied as Métis or urban residents. They have been forbidden to display the signs of their cultures and were long condemned to invisibility. But the situation is […]

Ciel variable 120 – Figures of Affirmation

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION

[Summer 2022]

Indigenous culture has long been oppressed in this country, but strong proud voices are now speaking out in public and are increasingly being heard. Here, we present three of these voices: they stand out for their use of photography as a central vehicle of their approach. Together, they offer a renewed vision of Indigenous identity, drawing on both tradition and contemporary realities and stamping a presence everywhere in the territory.

Gregory Halpern, ZZYZX – Louis Perreault

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Book Reviews
Authors: Louis Perreault | Artists: Gregory Halpern

May 18, 2022 [originally published in CV105 in Winter 2017] — In the photography world, the book continues to play an essential role of dissemination. Yet, beyond simply being a tool for promotion of a photographer’s work, the book is seen by many as a creative space on its own…

William A. Ewing, Photographs Are the Eyes of Our Civilization — Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, William E. Ewing | Artists: Alejandro Cartagena, Francesco Zizola, Olivier Christinat

[Winter 2022] An interview by Jacques Doyon [Excerpt] Author, exhibition curator, professor, and longtime director of the Musée de l’Élysée (1996– 2010), in Lausanne, William A. Ewing began his career in Montreal; he was the founder of Optica, which he directed from 1972 to 1977. Ewing has been exploring the field of photography for some […]

Valérian Mazataud, liwa mairin, la femme de l’eau — Serge Allaire

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Book Reviews
Authors: Serge Allaire

[Winter 2022] Montréal, à compte d’auteur, 2021, non paginé By Serge Allaire [Excerpt] Valérian Mazataud’s most recent work takes us on an adventure to the island of Bobel, a huge rock rising out of the Caribbean Sea fifty kilometres off the coast of La Mosquita, one of the last untouched regions on the planet. The […]

Anne-Marie Proulx, Le Jardin d’après — Élisabeth Recurt

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Book Reviews
Authors: Élisabeth Recurt | Artists: Anne-Marie Proulx

[Winter 2022] Paris, Éditions Loco, 2021, 192 p. By Élisabeth Recurt [Excerpt] Freely inspired by a novel by Anne Hébert,1 Anne-Marie Proulx’s photobook is composed of 125 black-and-white and colour photographs (taken on a 35 mm analogue camera and a cell phone), lines from plays (spoken by the protagonist of the novel, Flora Fontanges), and […]

Martin Désilets — Yannick Marcoux

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Yannick Marcoux | Artists: Martin Désilets

[Winter 2022] Les tableaux réunis Musée d’art de Joliette 19.06.2021— 6.09.2021 By Yannick Marcoux [Excerpt] In a poem in his L’art poétique, Nicolas Boileau made a suggestion that has become famous: “Put your work twenty times on the anvil.” It seems that twenty times is not enough for the artist Martin Désilets, who, since 2017, […]

Carlos Ferrand Zavala — Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Carlos Ferrand Zavala

[Winter 2022] SBC, galerie d’art contemporain, Montréal 4.09.2021 — 23.10.2021 By Alexis Desgagnés [Excerpt] Peruvian-born Montreal artist Carlos Ferrand Zavala, recipient of the Bourse de carrière Michel-Brault from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec in 2015, is known mainly as a director, screenwriter, and cinematographer. Among his latest films are 13, un […]

Catherine Bodmer — Emmanuelle Choquette

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Emmanuelle Choquette | Artists: Catherine Bodmer

[Winter 2022] Galerie B-312, Montréal 7.05.2021 — 23.06.2021 By Emmanuelle Choquette [Excerpt] The exhibition Synonymes is an outcome of Catherine Bodmer’s long-term research conducted during residencies in Mexico City between 2010 and 2018. Pairing photography and text, the body of work on display in Galerie B-312’s two exhibition spaces addresses Bodmer’s relationship, developed over time, […]

Françoise Sullivan — Didier Morelli

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Didier Morelli | Artists: Françoise Sullivan

[Winter 2022] Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal 14.05.2021 — 16.07.2021 By Didier Morelli [Excerpt] Even in her nineties, the seminal Quebec interdisciplinary artist Françoise Sullivan never ceases to inspire. Françoise Sullivan: The 1970s, organized by the Galerie de l’UQAM, delves into her experimentation five decades ago, with particular attention to her time in Italy. Filmed and […]

Lorenza Böttner — Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth | Artists: Lorenza Böttner

[Winter 2022] Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen, Montréal 29.04.2021 — 19.06.2021 By Fanny Bieth [Excerpt] Lorenza Böttner: Requiem for the Norm is the first international retrospective exhibition for the Chilean-German artist Lorenza Böttner, a trans person who lost both arms as a child following an accident. Böttner’s practice and life embody, to use the words […]

Dawit L. Petros — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Dawit L. Petros

[Winter 2022] Galerie Bradley Ertaskiran, Montréal 3.09.2021 — 30.10.2021 By Claudia Polledri [Excerpt] Gaps, holes, fissures, and frictions – the title defines the perimeter of the exhibition by Eritrean artist Dawit L. Petros, presented as part of the Momenta 2021 satellite program. In this show, composed of photographs and serigraphs on paper and canvas, Petros, […]

Sylvie Readman, Denis Rioux — Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Denis Rioux, Sylvie Readman

[Winter 2022] Galerie Laroche/Joncas, Montréal 8.09.2021 — 9.10.2021 By Mona Hakim [Excerpt] Presented in a single exhibition space and arranged facing each other, the photographs of Sylvie Readman and Denis Rioux highlight their common concern with the issues and properties of the photographic language within which the primary conditions of the visual and conceptual experience […]

Dawoud Bey — Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Dawoud Bey

[Winter 2022] Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 17.04.2021 — 3.10.2021 By Ariane Noël de Tilly [Excerpt] Since the very inception of his photographic career, Dawoud Bey has pointed his lens toward people and, especially, marginalized communities. The retrospective of his work presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art highlighted the ethical dimension […]

James Coleman, What Goes Around Comes Around — Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: James Coleman

[Winter 2022] By Stephen Horne “A being racing into the future passes a being racing into the past two footprints perpetually obliterating one another toe to heel, heel to toe.” – W. B. YEATS 1 [Excerpt] James Coleman´s complex cinematic installations disclose the beauty and pleasure of “looking.” The aesthetic experience to which I refer […]

Errance Sans Retour, “They also killed my father” — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Renaud Philippe

[Winter 2022] By Pierre Dessureault [Excerpt] “We are not in front of the images; we are in the middle of them. Like they are in the middle of us. The question is how we circulate among them, how we make them circulate.”1 The life of images, constantly relaunched in various presentation contexts, is core to […]

Et fili ? Cultural Transmission and the Quebec Photobook — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Anne-Marie Proulx, Bertrand Carrière, Charles-Frédérick Ouellet, Donigan Cumming, Florence Le Blanc, Guillaume Simoneau, John Max, Matthieu Brouillard, Michel Campeau, Sylvain Cousineau

[Hiver 2022] By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] It’s a lovely image: my father, who had been taking photographs since the 1960s, had given me his Beseler 23C II enlarger. I went to pick it up in order to flesh out my amateur darkroom, and I was thinking about transmission of culture. The caption might have quoted […]

Andreas Rutkauskas, Refuge: After the Fire — Franck Michel, The Resilience of Landscapes

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Portfolios
Authors: Franck Michel | Artists: Andreas Rutkauskas

[Winter 2022] By Franck Michel The landscape enwraps, penetrates, it is not before one as an object. . . . It is an atmosphere, a sensory halo, and not simply a visual through-line. – DAVID LE BRETON   [Excerpt] The history of landscape photography offers an incomparable source of information on the evolution of territories […]

Thomas Kneubühler, Alpine Signals — Louis Perreault, Without Data Loss

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Portfolios
Authors: Louis Perreault | Artists: Thomas Kneubühler

[Winter 2022] By Louis Perreault [Excerpt] In the first photograph in Alpine Signals, the immaculate white of a horse’s mane offers a reminder of the clouds that overhang the distant mountains. The blue sky spreads above the shrubs positioned in the centre of the composition, which pick up the colour of the verdant nature in […]

Geneviève Chevalier, Mirement/Towering : La Ménagerie et L’Herbier — Sylvain Campeau, Arranging the Living

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Geneviève Chevalier

[Winter 2022] By Sylvain Campeau [Excerpt] Over the last few years, artist Geneviève Chevalier has become interested in places and methods of classification used in the natural sciences to inventory and analyze flora and fauna. Menageries were, in a way, the ancestors of museums. They contained both collections and live exotic animals, but as an […]

Against Nature

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Portfolios
Artists: Andreas Rutkauskas, Geneviève Chevalier, Thomas Kneubühler

[Winter 2022] The title might seem paradoxical, as the artists brought together for this issue’s thematic section are all defenders and lovers of nature and spend a good deal of time in it. But what their works reveal is a “naturality” thoroughly permeated by human activity and entirely shaped by it, implying that its fate […]

Against Nature?

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2022] Par Jacques Doyon The title might seem paradoxical, as the artists brought together for this issue’s thematic section are all defenders and lovers of nature and spend a good deal of time in it. But what their works reveal is a “naturality” thoroughly permeated by human activity and entirely shaped by it, implying […]

Ciel variable 119 – AGAINST NATURE

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE

[Winter 2022]

The title Against Nature might seem paradoxical, as the artists brought together for this issue’s thematic section are all defenders and lovers of nature and spend a good deal of time in it. But what their works reveal is a “naturality” thoroughly permeated by human activity and entirely shaped by it, implying that its fate is entirely in our hands.