Archives

Nicolas Baier, Autoportrait – Sylvain Campeau, Transiting through Photography

Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Nicolas Baier

March 26, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — To judge by his works, Nicolas Baier has never been anything but a photographer, as these works are replete with all the potentialities, components, and mechanisms of the medium. This is so even when the works he creates are not photographic…

Public Art

Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Portfolios
Artists: Dominique Auerbacher, Miki Gingras, Nicolas Baier, Patrick Dionne

[Spring/summer 2013] A thematic section on public art featuring the works of nicolas baier, dominique auerbacher, and patrick dionne and Miki gingras, highlighting the issues of community affirmation in the public space and the revelation, or contestation, of its customs and regulations. Somewhere between group portrait, “objective” self-portrait, and urban anti-aesthetic . . . NICOLAS […]

Other Ways of Inscribing Public Art in the City

Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Dominique Auerbacher, Nicolas Baier

[Spring/summer 2013] In this issue, we return to the question of public art, a subject we previously addressed in issues 82 and 90. The artworks chosen for this portfolio stand out for the acuity with which their context for integration has been managed. Each of these artworks, in its way, offers an exemplary response to […]

Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART

[Spring-Summer 2013] A thematic section on public art featuring the works of Nicolas Baier, Dominique Auerbacher, and Patrick Dionne and Miki Gingras, highlighting the issues of community affirmation in the public space and the revelation, or contestation, of its customs and regulations. Some where between group portrait, “objective” selfportrait, and urban antiaesthetic . . […]

Joan Fontcuberta, Photography in the Era of Meteorites – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Interviews
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés, Joan Fontcuberta | Artists: Joan Fontcuberta

November 6, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — After forty years of international recognition and numerous exhibitions, today catalonian artist Joan Fontcuberta is a major voice in the discourse on photographic issues in the era of Web 2.0. In 2011, he was co-curator of the controversial exhibition “From Here On,” presented at the rencontres d’Arles…

New and Worthy – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Sonia Pelletier

[Winter 2013] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Par Sonia Pelletier Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1964-1977 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012; edited by Matthew S. Witkovsky, 264 pp., Eng.) Le langage des […]

David Tomas, Live rightly, die, die . . . – Bernard Schütze

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Bernard Schütze

November 8, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Live rightly, die, die…, the book that accompanies the two-part exhibition organized by the artist-curator David Tomas at Dazibao, is no ordinary exhibition catalogue with its requisite visual documentation and explanatory theoretical essay. Live rightly, die, die… does in fact contain ample visuals and a lengthy essay, but instead of cataloguing and contextualizing the exhibition the book is an experimental extension and integral part of the overall Live rightly, die, die… project. The unusual nature of the publication is made immediately apparent as one opens the book and flips to the page facing the title page…

Chantal Pontbriand, Mutations: Perspectives on Photography – Carol Payne

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Carol Payne

November 13, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Mutations : Perspectives sur la photographie / Perspectives on Photography, the major publication marking the 2011 edition of the Paris Photo biennial exhibition, is an omnibus collection of current thinking about photography theory and recent photo-based art. Edited by Chantal Pontbriand, founder and editor of the now defunct (and still much lamented) Montreal-based journal Parachute…

Ivan Binet, Bribes – Catherine Lebel Ouellet

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Catherine Lebel Ouellet | Artists: Ivan Binet

November 15, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Edward Curtis, Un projet démesuré – Guy Sioui Durand

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Guy Sioui Durand | Artists: Edward Curtis

November 20, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Larry Clark, C|O Berlin – Eloi Desjardins

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Eloi Desjardins | Artists: Larry Clark

November 22, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Berenice Abbott: Photographs – John K. Grande

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Berenice Abbott

November 27, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Toronto, being such an architectural and photographic city, seems the perfect venue for a Berenice Abbott show. In collaboration with the Jeu de Paume in Paris, Toronto’s Ryerson Image Centre mounted a fine, comprehensive survey exhibition of Abbott’s life in photography. Early on, Abbott got to know Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray in Greenwich Village, New York, before heading for Paris to become Man Ray’s apprentice and assistant…

Making History, Ray 2012 Fotografieprojekte – Serge Allaire

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Serge Allaire | Artists: Luc Delahaye, Simon Norfolk

November 29, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Nicolas Baier, Vanité / Autoportrait – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Nicolas Baier

December 4, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Melanie Gilligan, Popular Unrest, Crisis in the Credit System / Jan Švankmajer Zahrada, Byt, Do Pivnice – Pierre Rannou

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Pierre Rannou | Artists: Jan Švankmajer, Melanie Gilligann

December 6, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Ryoji Ikeda – Julien Champagne

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Julien Champagne | Artists: Ryoji Ikeda

December 11, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

C.1983. The Role of Photography in Memory, Mass Culture and illusion – Karen Henry

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Essays
Authors: Karen Henry | Artists: Henri Robideau

November 6, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Who would have thought that the 1980s were such a stimulating time. There is so much emphasis in cultural memory on the 1960s and 1970s that it seemed like it was all over by the 1980s – but not so, as revealed in the two-part exhibition on photography in Vancouver c. 1983…

Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie 2012 – Jean-François Nadeau

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Essays
Authors: Jean-François Nadeau | Artists: Beatrix von Conta, Gabor Szilasi, Guillaume D. Cyr, Jocelyne Alloucherie, Martin Beaulieu, Maryse Goudreau, Yana Ouellet

December 18, 2017 [originally published in French in CV93 in Winter 2013] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Phil Chadwick, Creative Scene Investigation – Bénédicte Ramade, Tom Thomson in the Light of Forensic Meteorology

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade | Artists: Phil Chadwick

December 20, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Meteorology is a science of prediction. Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of information are analyzed in order to anticipate precipitation, predict temperatures, and so on.¹ The weather report, on tv or radio, has become an indispensable barometer, and there are now countless weather “aps” available…

Emmanuelle Léonard, Homicide, Détenu Vs Détenu, Archives Du Palais De Justice De La Ville De Québec – Gaëlle Morel, Opening Up Forensic Photography

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Gaëlle Morel | Artists: Emmanuelle Léonard

December 20, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — After devoting a number of projects to the world of work, Montreal photographer and videographer Emmanuelle Léonard investigates the notions of visual traces and information in her most recent works…

William E. Jones, Tearoom. The Trial of the Incriminating Image – Vincent Lavoie

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Vincent Lavoie | Artists: William E. Jones

January 10, 2018 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — In the summer of 1962, the Mansfield, Ohio, police department, convinced that homosexual practices created a predisposition to perpetrate serious predatory crimes, decided to put the public restroom in a large park in its town under surveillance. The site was suspected of being the scene of clandestine sexual activities…

Paul Vanouse, Suspect Inversion Center – Marianne Cloutier, The Imaginary of Forensics

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Marianne Cloutier | Artists: Paul Vanouse

January 15, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — The American artist Paul Vanouse, known for his collaboration with the collective Critical Art Ensemble, has had a practice involving diversion since the early 1990s. He appropriates techniques, tools, materials¹ , and knowledge from the techno-sciences in order to better examine what is at stake in those disciplines…

Corinne May Botz, The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death – Alexis Lussier, A Residue of Uneasiness

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Alexis Lussier | Artists: Corinne May Botz

January 17, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Ever since Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914) first took his metric photographs, in which he tried to produce accurate maps of crime scenes, legal photography has always been, in spite of itself, a “photography of interiors.” This involved considerable technical constraints (cramped quarters with no place to pull back, poor of insufficient lighting, and so on), as Rodolphe Reiss (1875–1929) often demonstrated…

Errol Morris, Standard Operating Procedure – Susan Schuppli, Probative Images

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Susan Schuppli | Artists: Errol Morris

January 22, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — Standard Operating Procedure, directed by Errol Morris, offers a concise example of a methodological shift – what we (in the European Research Council project that I am affiliated with) have elsewhere called a forensic turn – within the investigation of human rights violations and war crimes…

Forensics: Representations and Regimes of Truth – Vincent Lavoie

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Vincent Lavoie | Artists: Taryn Simon

January 24, 2017 [originally published in CV93 in Winter 2013] — On 6 June 1985, the international press was invited to the small Embu das Artes cemetery in Brazil to witness an extraordinary discovery. A team of police officers and medico-legal experts had just exhumed the presumed remains of Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor at Auschwitz. A series of photographs taken on this occasion by reporter Robert Nickelsberg show the press’s infatuation with this event…

Guest editor: Vincent Lavoie

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Portfolios
Authors: Vincent Lavoie

Since the 1990s, there has been a rise to pre-eminence of forensic imaginaries. This phenomenon can be observed in contemporary literature, as in novels by Kathy Reichs (Déjà Dead, 1997), herself a forensic anthropologist by profession, and in television series (Crime Scene Investigation, 2000; Forensic Files, 2000; Bones, 2005) that promulgate a belief in the […]

A Forensic Aesthetic

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

This issue of Ciel variable includes a fifty-page special section on the appropriation by visual artists of questions related to forensic evidence. Organized by guest editor Vincent Lavoie, professor of art history and photography at UQAM, this issue continues in the spirit of some of our previous issues focusing on specific aspects of photographic studies […]

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS

[Winter 2013] This issue of Ciel variable includes a fifty-page special section on the appropriation by visual artists of questions related to forensic evidence. Organized by guest editor Vincent Lavoie, professor of art history and photography at UQAM, this issue continues in the spirit of some of our previous issues focusing on specific aspects of […]

Stephen Bulger, The State of the Contemporary Photography Market – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Stephen Bulger

September 5, 2017 [originally published in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Stephen Bulger studied at Ryerson University in Toronto. He was the founding director of the Ryerson Gallery, where he managed over thirty exhibitions. in 1994, he opened the Stephen Bulger gallery to exhibit and sell contemporary and historical photographs, with a special emphasis on the documentary tradition and Canadian historical photographs.

New and Worthy – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Sonia Pelletier

[Fall 2012] Des essais Mutations, perspectives sur la photographie / Perspectives on Photography (Paris Photo, Steidl, France / Allemagne, sous la direction de / edited by Chantal Pontbriand, 2012, 414 p., fr. / angl.) a été publié à l’occasion de la foire Paris Photo et constitue un ouvrage de premier plan sur l’évolution et l’état […]

Martha Langford and John Langford, A Cold War Tourist and His Camera – Peter White

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Peter White

September 7, 2017 [originally published in CV92 in Fall 2012] — On the one hand, there are the snaps by career civil servant Warren Langford who, in 1963, unaccountably found himself part of domestic and overseas military-civilian familiarization tours of Cold War hot spots.1 On the other hand, there are his daughter Martha, an authority in the scholarly study of vernacular photography, and son John, a political scientist whose expertise includes public sector ethics…

Linda-Marlena Bucholtz Ross, La beauté sauvage des chantiers de Montréal – Dan Antonat

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Dan Antonat | Artists: Linda-Marlena Bucholtz Ross

September 11, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Martin Désilets, Entre des fragments de choses, d’espace et de temps – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Martin Désilets

September 13, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Jon Rafman, The Nine Eyes of Google Street View / Emmanuel Galland, De Lafontaine à Racine, en passant par Bossé et Talbot – Catherine Lebel Ouellet

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Catherine Lebel Ouellet | Artists: Emmanuel Galland, Jon Rafman

September 18, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Pierre Blache, Non loin de Chandigarh – Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Pierre Blache

September 21, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Coming through the Fog: Les rencontres de Matthieu Brouillard et de Donigan Cumming – Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Donigan Cumming, Matthieu Brouillard

September 26, 2017 [originally published in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Curated by Erin Silver, this bilingually (and cleverly) titled exhibition juxtaposed works by Matthieu Brouillard and Donigan Cumming, two artists who, although they are separated by a generation and consequently possess different measures of experience, are both well known to the Montreal art scene. The act of juxtaposition is, in itself, a strong curatorial statement…

Patrice Duhamel, Le catalogue des vents qui ont soufflé – Hélène Brunet Neumann

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Hélène Brunet Neumann | Artists: Patrice Duhamel

September 28, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Jeremy Borsos, Le retour du 8 mm – Caroline Bem

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Caroline Bem | Artists: Jeremy Borsos

October 2, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

À louer / For Rent : UMA, various venues, Montreal – James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Marisa Portolese

October 4, 2017 [originally published in CV92 in Fall 2012] — UMA, Montreal’s estimable Maison de l’image et de la photographie, has taken a valuable and highly laudatory initiative in seeking out vacant commercial spaces throughout Montreal and installing photographic works in their windows. What was once a forlorn blank slate of the inner city becomes a vibrant forum for the photographic image. The works remain on view until the spaces are rented or sold…

Christian Marclay, The Clock – Louis Cummins

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Louis Cummins | Artists: Christian Marclay

October 2, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Paul Graham : In the Present – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Paul Graham

October 12, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — This spring, the Pace Gallery in New York, a temple to photography since the early 1980s, had a show of recent works by English photographer Paul Graham in one of its locations in the Chelsea neighbourhood. The Present, the works which have also been published in a book by the English publisher MACK, is the third part of a photographic trilogy begun at the turn of the century with American Night (1998–2002), followed by the ambitious series A Shimmer of Possibility (2004–06)…

Taryn Simon, Foiling the Truth: The Effects of the Real and Fictional in Documentary Photography – Mirna Boyadjian

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Essays
Authors: Mirna Boyadjian | Artists: Taryn Simon

October 16, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Howard Becker wrote an essay called “Do Photographs Tell the Truth?” in 1986, and the question still seems pertinent. Although today we admit that the photographic image constitutes a (re)construction of the world and not a reproduction of reality, a certain legalistic conception of photographs tends to be maintained…

Chronicles of a Disappearance : Seeing What Disappears – Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Essays
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: José Toirac, Omer Fast, Philippe Parreno, Taryn Simon

October 18, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Sometimes, thanks to a curator’s insight, a group exhibition be comes a work of art in itself. This is the case for “Chronicles of a Disappearance,” in which John Zeppetelli not only presents five artworks of an extraordinary density but, in bringing them together, weaves networks of meaning that greatly strengthen each artwork.

Eamon Mac Mahon, Landlocked – Isa Tousignant, The View from Up Here : Perspective on the Wild

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Portfolios
Authors: Isa Tousignant | Artists: Eamon Mac Mahon

October 23, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — My first encounter with Canadian photographer and artist Eamon Mac Mahon was when I worked as an editor for a travel magazine, at which he was the stuff of local legend. He had shot a story about the Bahamas for which he’d risked life and limb: on a tiny, rickety plane with, lore dictates, more holes than a fisherman’s net, he hung out of the main cavity – tied in place with only a rope – to capture aerial shots of the turquoise swirling waters. The story won awards.

Andreas Rutkauskas, Virtually There – Geneviève Chevalier, Hiking the Trails of What Is to Come

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Portfolios
Authors: Geneviève Chevalier | Artists: Andreas Rutkauskas

October 25, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — I found out about the Virtually There project in 2009 during a brief visit to the Gushul Studio, which offers a residency program run by the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. At the time, Andreas Rutkauskas was staying there and preparing to make another of his outings in the mountains. The Gushul Studio is located in the small town of Blairmore, in the Crowsnest Pass area of the Rocky Mountains in the southwest part of Alberta…

Thomas Kneubühler, Under Currents – Pierre Dessureault, Currents

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Thomas Kneubühler

October 30, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Thomas Kneubühler’s Under Currents takes us through the hydroelectric installations at James Bay and the complex network of exchanges between North and South that their construction has established. What is initially striking in this coherent whole is the rigorous organization of various elements in a series of groupings to form a well-marked path that is constructed bit by bit, in successive layers, with each of the carefully defined and delimited components opening new perspectives and adding a stratum of meaning to the plural discourse that has been set in motion.

True North

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Portfolios
Artists: Andreas Rutkauskas, Eamon Mac Mahon, Thomas Kneubühler

Three experiences of the north, real or perceived, that bring us face to face with the realities of a little-known region undergoing accelerated transformation. The north is at once home to a sparse population, an ecosystem vital to the entire continent, and a vast resource base that is in the sights of developers as ever […]

Full North / Vrai Nord

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Andreas Rutkauskas, Eamon Mac Mahon, Thomas Kneubühler

Today, the North is making economic headlines, as it has become a new Eldorado for societies stalked by the dream of continual growth. This territory – homeland to First Nations, an ecosystem vital to the entire continent, and a vast pool of natural resources – is nevertheless mostly unknown to the general public. National mythology […]

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH

[Fall 2012] Today, the North is making economic headlines, as it has become a new Eldorado for societies stalked by the dream of continual growth. This territory – homeland to First Nations, an ecosystem vital to the entire continent, and a vast pool of natural resources – is nevertheless mostly unknown to the general public. […]

Sébastien Hudon – Discovering and Collecting Modern Photographs in Quebec – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Sébastien Hudon | Artists: Albert Dumouchel, Jean-Onésime Legault, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Sydney Jack Hayward

June 12, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — Now the artistic director of La Bande Vidéo, Sébastien Hudon has been, in turn, a bookseller, an author, a critic, and an independent curator. He was nominated for the young curator of the year award at the first agac gala following his presentation of two successive exhibitions mounted in 2010 and 2011 at Maison Hamel-Bruneau, in Quebec City: “Concerto en bleu majeur,” on the links between the visual arts and music, and …

New and worthy – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Sonia Pelletier

[Spring/summer 2012] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. New and Worthy Gwenaël Bélanger. Casser l’image (Expression, Centre d’exposition, Musée régional de Rimouski, 2011, n. p., fr. / angl.) Richard-Max Tremblay, Portrait (les éditions du passage, 2011, Montréal, 192 p., […]

Nathalie Boulouch, Le ciel est bleu. Une histoire de la photographie couleur – Érika Wicky

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Erika Wicky

June 14, 2017 [originally published in French in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada – Cheryl Simon

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Cheryl Simon

June 19, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — This Is Not a History of Canadian Photography. Less a history of Canadian photography, more a Canadian history told through photography, The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada considers how photographic representation is deployed to shape identity. Co-edited by Carleton University professor Carol Payne and Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography curator Andrea Kunard, the book represents the most extensive contribution to scholarship on Canadian photography in more than twenty years and may be one of the most important.

Lynne Marsh, Stage Backstage – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Lynne Marsh

June 21, 2017 [originally published in French in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Adad Hannah, Les Russes – Eloi Desjardins

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Eloi Desjardins | Artists: Adad Hannah

June 27, 2017 [originally published in French in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Normand Rajotte, Like a Whisper (The Continuation) – Isa Tousignant

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Isa Tousignant | Artists: Normand Rajotte

June 28, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — Every summer until we were teenagers, my sister and I spent three entire months running like wild things through the dense forest of the Laurentians. With our two neighbour friends and a borrowed husky dog, we explored every nook, cranny, brook, and blueberry bush of a stretch of about two kilometres around our cottage all day, every day. They were some of my favourite times, times of excitement, serenity, and free-spiritedness that I’ve attempted to re-create since – with only a modicum of success.

Philippe Hamelin, Transe – Louis Cummins

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Louis Cummins | Artists: Bernardino Femminielli, Philippe Hamelin

July 4, 2017 [originally published in French in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Songs of the Future: Canadian Industrial Photographs 1858 to Today – John K. Grande

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande

July 6, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — The landscape tradition in North American photography extends back into the colonial era. In “Songs of the Future,” photography is an instrument that documents the unfolding of an industrial heritage. Some of the flavour of this show is akin to Gordon Lightfoot’s song Canadian Railway Trilogy, but, sadly, no images of Chinese or Irish workers or of Sir William van Horne figure in it.

Steichen. Glamour, mode et célébrités – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Edward Steichen

July 31, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Scott Chandler, Fordlândia – James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Scott Chandler

August 2, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — Scott Chandler’s recent work opens a window on a place and a time unknown to us. With an “under-the-radar” documentary ethic and his cumbersome camera equipment, he travelled to the Brazilian Amazon to photograph eloquent ruins hidden for generations from the outside world.

Les Rencontres de Bamako, Biennale africaine de la photographie – Dominique Fontaine

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Dominique Fontaine

August 7, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

David Askevold, Disorientation Artist – Robert Evans

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Essays
Authors: Robert Evans | Artists: David Askevold

August 9, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — David Askevold’s work is variously labelled as post-minimal, conceptual, narrative, story art, and post-movement, although none of these is adequate. Westerns, country-and-western music, poltergeists, ghosts, spirits, games, rules, narratives, dreams, history, geography, scientific imaging, and anthropology all inform his work. The list of materials and approaches with which he worked is similarly eclectic…

Springtime of South African Photography – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis

August 14, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — A number of events (exhibitions, publications, and awards) have recently highlighted the growing success of South African photography on the international contemporary scene. Since the abolition of apartheid, and then the election of Nelson Mandela as president of the country in 1994, South Africa has become the spearhead of contemporary African photography, reinforced by a long and rich history that begins with the invention of photography itself, imported to Cape Town in the 1840s.¹…

Nadia Seboussi, Le dernier été de la raison – Pierre Rannou, Looking Back at the Image

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Essays
Authors: Pierre Rannou | Artists: Nadia Seboussi

August 16, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — When we enter the exhibition space at the UQAM gallery, what we see first are two television screens with headphone sets, and then we see two more screens on the wall to the right. As we continue to look around, we note the large-format photocopies of newspaper front pages on two of the four walls and, standing alone on the left side of the exhibition space, a pedestal on which a book sits…

Jacky Georges Lafargue et Louis Couturier, Resolute Bay : Voyage du jour dans la nuit – Sonia Pelletier, A Wall of Snow, or Northern Studies Visited

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Portfolios
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Jacky Georges Lafargue, Louis Couturier

August 21, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — Jacky Georges Lafargue and Louis Couturier’s project Resolute Bay – Voyage du jour dans la nuit finds a way to take viewers on a sort of voyage to the far reaches of our country and an encounter with people who live in a remote Inuit village with only about two hundred inhabitants…

Tendance Floue : MAD IN INDIA – Bruno Chalifour, A Future to Define

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Portfolios
Authors: Bruno Chalifour | Artists: Tendance Floue

August 23, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — Tendance Floue is a collective of French photographers open to the world and the power of expression who reject labels and preconceptions. They are fascinated by the aesthetic possibilities that documentary photography, which they see as subjective, may offer them – whence, no doubt, the name of their group: “Tendance” (tendency), which tends toward without ever reaching the goal, and “Floue” (vague or blurred), resolutely evading precise definitions. The result?…

Edward Burtynsky, Oil – Sylvain Campeau, Between the Perceptible and the Ethical

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Edward Burtynsky

August 28, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — The images are supreme. Of rather respectable dimensions – when they are not downright immense – and brightly coloured, they please us, dazzle us, force us to admire them. They show landscapes, openings into our immediate environment. But this environment does not have the bucolic accents of yore, for it is increasingly occupied by signs of exploitation of natural resources. Its wild – truly wild – territories are rarer and rarer…

Our world

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD
Artists: Edward Burtynsky, Jacky Georges Lafargue, Louis Couturier, Nadia Seboussi, Tendance Floue

From Alberta to Azerbaijan, from Resolute Bay to Mumbai, and from Oran to Johannesburg,this issue reveals images of an industrious, prosperous world that includes numerous dysfunctions and aberrations. With aesthetic strategies combining the documentary and the sublime, a multitude of perspectives, narrations, and installations, the image sometimes retreats to the background. EDWARD BURTYNSKY Oil A […]

That Which the Image Bespeaks – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Edward Burtynsky, Jacky Georges Lafargue, Louis Couturier

From Alberta to Azerbaijan, from Resolute Bay to Mumbai, via Oran, Johannesburg, Chittagong, Shanghai, and Tucson, this issue presents images of an industrious, prosperous world that has its (un)fair share of dysfunctions and aberrations. In all of these images, the documentary component, embodied within very different aesthetic strategies, attests to and interprets various facets of […]

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD

[Spring-Summer 2012] From Alberta to Azerbaijan, from resolute Bay to mumbai, and from Oran to Johannesburg, this issue reveals images of an industrious, prosperous world that includes numerous dysfunctions and aberrations. with aesthetic strategies combining the documentary and the sublime, a multitude of perspectives, narrations, and installations, the image sometimes retreats to the background. […]

Bastien Gilbert, Librairie Formats – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon

April 3, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Le BAL: A New Photographic Institution in France? – Michel Poivert

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: Michel Poivert

April 3, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — We present an analysis of the context and strategic positionings that prevailed at the foundation of bal, a French photography institution with its roots in the field of independent press agencies. Although such a reality does not have its equivalent here, Michel Poivert’s viewpoints on the emergence of institutions, the recognition of documentary photography, and the issues in visual media education provide an interesting perspective on the initiatives taken by, and shortcomings of our institutions with regard to photographic issues.

New and Worthy – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Sonia Pelletier

[Winter 2012] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. New and Worthy The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada (edited by Carole Payne, Andrea Kunard, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011, 270 p., angl.) Sylvain Campeau (Chantiers de l’image, Éditions Nota […]

B. Plossu et D. Le Breton, Des millions d’années / F. Nuñez et D. Le Breton, mu-jô – Maxime Coulombe

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Maxime Coulombe

April 10, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Ouvrir le document : Enjeux et pratiques de la documentation dans les arts visuels contemporains – Felicity Tayler

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Anne Bénichou, Felicity Tayler

April 12, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — The title of this volume, which translates as “Open the document,” is an imperative: it urges you to unfold the cover, printed in solid gold ink, of a perfect-bound paperback. This materiality suggests that the contents are both precious and brilliant, and that there is urgency in its message…

Boris Mikhailov – Johanna Mizgala

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Boris Mikhailov

April 18, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — During the Soviet era, it was unlawful to photograph anything that contradicted the reigning political ideology. As images were seen to be an extremely forceful argument to support the cause, anything that might show signs of rust on the well-oiled machine would not be tolerated. The negation of an outlet for visual evidence to the contrary of the accepted narrative attests to the very power of the documentary photograph, for it bears silence witness when it is too dangerous to speak the truth.

Bertrand Carrière – Sandra Fillion

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sandra Fillion | Artists: Bertrand Carrière

April 19, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Guy Tillim – Jen Hutton

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jen Hutton | Artists: Guy Tillim

April 24, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — Guy Tillim’s sizable exhibition (initially organized by the Museum of Contemporary Photo at Columbia College in Chicago) at the Design Exchange was a provocative inclusion in 2011’s Scotiabank contact Festival. The title of the exhibition evokes the spirit of Patrice Lumumba, a staunch supporter of African nationalism and the first elected prime minister of the Congo after it gained independence from Belgium in June 1960…

Captatio oculi – Barbara Garant

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Barbara Garant

April 26, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

André Cornellier – Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: André Cornellier

May 1, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — Two photographic panoramas evocative of nineteenth-century popular entertainment were on view at the McCord Museum of Canadian History. The first was a panoramic vista made by the Wm. Notman & Son studio in 1896. The larger of the two, titled The Great Mural, was created by photographer André Cornellier in 1996, exactly a century later. Both show a 360-degree bird’s-eye (or God’s-eye) view of Montreal, as seen from the southwest…

Emmanuelle Léonard, Juste une image – Nicolas Mavrikakis

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nicolas Mavrikakis | Artists: Emmanuelle Léonard

May 3, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Suzy Lake – Sholem Krishtalka

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sholem Krishtalka | Artists: Suzy Lake

May 8, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — In general, the art world is not kind to older women artists. Nan Goldin recently gave an interview in which she was brutally frank on the subject. She remarked that three-quarters of the art world wants her dead; her work has changed, but the market would rather have the Nan of yore: documents of seedy underbellies and demi-mondes. Now that she has the life perspective of a woman in her sixties, her hard-won ease does not square with the woman the art world wants her to be. Suzy Lake has made this harsh truth the core of her work. But then again, this is not a recent development…

Déclic 70 – Jean Lauzon

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean Lauzon

May 10, 2017 [originally published in French in CV90 in Winter 2012] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Les Rencontres d’Arles – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne

May 15, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — The fourty-second edition of Les Rencontres d’Arles adopted the challenge of exploring the image economy, as well as photography’s relationship with the World Wide Web and with social networks, within the ambit of forty-seven diverse exhibitions. “From Here On,” the centrepiece exhibition at the Rencontres, presented photography in the context of the Web, the “digital revolution,” and how they circulate images.

Lucidity. Inward Views. Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal – René Viau

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: René Viau

May 17, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — Bringing together twenty-six artists under the title Lucidity. Inward Views, the twelfth edition of Le Mois de la photo à Montréal made the theme that served as its title, if not a template for comprehension, the pivot of its articulations. Through the works in this dense, enriching event, a strongly subjective vision was proposed to viewers. For the artists, “interrogating the world goes hand in hand with interrogating oneself (and vice versa),” according to event curator Anne-Marie Ninacs.¹

La Biennale di Venezia 2011 – Alice Ming Wai Jim

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: Alice Ming Wai Jim

May 22, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — “Navinland needs YOU,” according to the s.w.a.g. (souvenirs, wearables, and gifts) cum recruitment material of Thai artist of Indian descent Navin Rawanchaikul’s latest staging of his fledgling non-nation. Set up in a bar and restaurant at the entrance to the Giardini, where the permanent national pavilions of the Venice Biennale have been since 1885, Paradiso di Navin: A Mission to Establish Navinland is a parody as astute as it is amusing of the year’s theme of ILLUMInations.

Serge Emmanuel Jongué, Capturing and Narrating the Unspeakable – Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Serge Emmanuel Jongué

May 24, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — The name Serge Emmanuel Jongué (who died in 2006) was not unknown in the photographic community. In his important essay titled “The New Photographic Order,” published in 1990,¹ Jongué cast a lucid eye on the issues in Quebec documentary photography in the 1970s. His reinterpretation of the official discourse attached to this photographic school has become a classic for those interested in the history and comprehension of Quebec photographic practices.

Patrick Dionne et Miki Gingras, Mémoire – Sylvain Campeau, Self-document and Rediscovered Sociability

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Miki Gingras, Patrick Dionne

May 29, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — For a number of years, Patrick Dionne and Miki Gingras have been working on large-scale photographic projects that encourage artistic engagement in society. In 2002, to better fulfil this mission, they founded Diasol, a charitable organization the objective of which is to use art photography as a means of intervention with marginalized people and young people and adults with difficulties with school or family, in psychological distress, or in the process of social reintegration.

MoAD, The face of African Diaspora – Alexandra Martin, Old and New Photographs of African Diaspora

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: Alexandra Martin

May 31, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — In downtown San Francisco, at the corner of Mission and Third streets, is a huge picture window before which passersby can stop to look at a photo-mosaic several metres high inspired by the famous portrait Girl from Tamale (1973) by Chester Higgins Jr., which is also one of the “tiles” in the mosaic.

JR, The Wrinkles of the City – John K. Grande, Image Bridge Builder

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: JR

June 5, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — JR’s photography faces real life. The human faces that engage us in the real environments of the First and Third worlds are an exercise in self-identification within a larger matrix that is a seemingly invisible population of everyday people. Largely unrecognized, these people are off the map when it comes to social, political, or economic rights.

Creating Visibility through Collaboration – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: JR, Miki Gingras, Patrick Dionne

Bringing to the walls and façades of cities the oversized faces of their inhabitants, reappropriating the urban space to advertise a presence and affirm an identity – these are the concerns that lie at the heart of the projects that we present in this issue. As a collaborative tool, photography becomes the instrument of a […]

Collaborations

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Portfolios
Artists: JR, Miki Gingras, MoAD, Patrick Dionne

See the oversized faces of a city’s inhabitants emerging on its walls and façades. These people came together to find ways to reappropriate the urban space, and to advertise their presence and identity. Here, photography is a tool for affirmative collaboration. JR The Wrinkles of the City Presentation of Wrinkles of the City, produced for […]

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS

[Winter 2012] See the oversized faces of a city’s inhabitants emerging on its walls and façades. These people came together to find ways to reappropriate the urban space, and to advertise their presence and identity. Here, photography is a tool for affirmative collaboration. ÉDITORIAL PORTFOLIOS FOCUS EXPOSITIONS LECTURES PAROLES Purchase this issue

Marie-Josée Jean, A renewed Vision for Centre VOX – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Interviews
Authors: Jacques Doyon, Marie-Josée Jean

January 24, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — Marie-Josée Jean became director of VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine in 2002, after organizing the sixth and seventh presentations of Mois de la Photo à Montréal. For the last ten years, her research has focused on the theory and practice of image-based and conceptual art. For VOX, she has organized exhibitions by John Baldessari, Bill Vazan, Marcel Duchamp, Maria Eichorn, …

New and Worthy – Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre

[Fall 2011] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2011, 376 p., angl.) The Dead (Toronto, The Magenta Foundation, 2010, n.p., angl.) Angela Grauerholz. The Inexhaustible image… épuiser l’image (Ottawa, […]

Vincent Lavoie, Photojournalismes : Revoir les canons de l’image de presse – Érika Wicky

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Erika Wicky, Vincent Lavoie

January 26, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Charles Gagnon, 4 Films – Christian Roy

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Christian Roy | Artists: Charles Gagnon

January 31, 2017 [originally published in French in CV89 in 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Wang Qingsong, When Worlds Collide – John K. Grande

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Wang Qingsong

February 2, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — Wang Qingsong’s photo scenarios focus on the ambiguities of China’s changing cultural identity and internal clash of ideologies. Pick Up the Pen, Fight to the End (1997) mimics a late Cultural Revolution poster, Take Up the Struggle of Polemics and Struggle to the End (1975), also on view. We see a girl wearing a Young Pioneers red scarf; Mao’s Little Red Book is on the table.

Wanda Koop, On the Edge of Experience – Sheena Ellison

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sheena Ellison | Artists: Wanda Koop

February 7, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — “Wanda Koop: On the Edge of Experience” is a major attraction of the Prairie Scene festival, the fifth presentation of this biannual event organized by the National Arts Centre in Ottawa to showcase Canadian regional art scenes. Koop’s show, a mid-career retrospective of sorts, consists of four chronologically arranged sections and offers a sampling from eight of the artist’s many series.

Chih-Chien Wang, Short Sentences – James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Chih-Chien Wang

February 9, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — In Short Sentences, an aptly titled show of recent photographic and video work, Chih-Chien Wang offers a moving photographic journey that is also a poetic reverie on words and things, life and death. The show is fittingly bracketed by an image of the artist’s son asleep, and another of his son being breastfed by his partner, Yushan. In the former, Shaore Lies on Futon, a photograph of his son lying prone on a futon in deep sleep, Wang evokes the fragility of young life.

Fiona Tan, Rise and Fall – Virginie Doré Lemonde

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Virginie Doré Lemonde | Artists: Fiona Tan

February 14, 2017 [originally published in French in CV89 in Fall 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Greg Staats, Condolence – Elizabeth Kalbfleisch

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Elizabeth Kalbfleisch | Artists: Greg Staats

February 16, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — Grief and loss are guiding principles in Greg Staats’s exhibition “Condolence,” but so, too, are more complex notions of alliance and reconciliation. The exhibition, co-presented by Oboro and Articule galleries and split between these two sites, offers Montrealers rare access to the work of an artist whose works are not often seen in this city.

Shadow Catchers Camera-less Photography – John K. Grande

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Adam Fuss, Susan Derges

February 21, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — “Shadow Catchers” takes off from the tradition of camera-less photography initiated by William Henry Fox-Talbot, whose photogenic drawings, first displayed to the public in 1839, preceded photography with a camera – a “little bit of magic realized,” as he put it. And we sense his influence on photographers who followed, such as Christian Schad, Lucia Moholy, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Man Ray, whose photogenic drawings…

Pascal Grandmaison – Anja Bock

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Anja Bock | Artists: Pascal Grandmaison

February 23, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — Blue-tinged icebergs? Handmade plaster sculptures? The sleek, cool signature of Pascal Grandmaison is hard to discern when we first enter his recent exhibition at Galerie René Blouin. His new works hold several surprises: while they continue his investigation of the mediated photographic act, the figure-ground relationship, and the representation of the invisible, the three works included here are rich in metaphor, melancholy, and artistic modesty.

Claude-Philippe Benoit, Société de ville – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Claude-Philippe Benoît

February 28, 2017 [originally published in French in CV89 in Fall 2011] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Patrick Ward, Monologue – Robin Simpson

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Robin Simpson | Artists: Patrick Ward

March 2, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — With Monologue, Patrick Ward has skilfully edited together a pool of handheld footage culled from video-sharing Web sites. In silence, a single and anonymous viewpoint scans, probes, and travels through a labyrinthine interior. As the viewer follows, ambling down dark halls, peering into basements, moving from room to room, an impossible ruin begins to take form. Ward’s exhibition is the first part of Skol’s novel thematic program, Unknown Artist.

Hervé Guibert, The Image of Words – Franck Michel

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Essays
Authors: Franck Michel | Artists: Hervé Guibert

March 7, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — From 9 February to 10 April 2011, the Maison européenne de la photographie in Paris presented the first-ever retrospective of the works of photographer and writer Hervé Guibert, comprising some 230 images.¹ I had a chance to visit the exhibition on a weekday morning when the museum opened, so I was just about alone in the galleries (something rare at this museum).

John Max: The Vertigo of the Free Gaze – Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Essays
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: John Max, Michel Lamothe

March 9, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — In John Max, a portrait, Michel Lamothe proves that an attentive gaze trained on the other may be transmuted into a deep meditation. To create this work, which is as fluid as a fiction film, Lamothe followed the photographer John Max for three years (from 2000 to 2003), accumulating 40 hours of footage – film that he spent months pruning and then editing, in collaboration with Louise Dugal…

Leaping Forward: The Montreal Museum of Fine Art’s New Photographic Collecting Practices – Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Alain Chagnon, Brian Merrett, Gabor Szilasi, John Max, Normand Rajotte, Roger Charbonneau

March 14, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — The acquisitions of Quebec photography from the 1960s to the 1980s are thus part of the institution’s current recognition of – and seemingly unquenchable gusto for – photographic imagery of all kinds, and these acquisitions have added considerably to the growing photography collection, which now totals over 1,500 works.

Making Light: The Emergence of Modernist Photography in Quebec Revealed – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Albert Dumouchel, Conrad Tremblay, Gordon Webber, Guy Borremans, Jauran, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Jean-Pierre Beaudin, Omer Parent, Rodolphe de Repentigny

March 16, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — There are still many gaps in our knowledge of the history of Quebec photography. I realized this after seeing “Photographes rebelles à l’époque de la Grande Noirceur (1937-1961),” which was held at Maison Hamel-Bruneau in Quebec City. Devoted to photography during the Duplessis era, the exhibition comprised about eighty works…

Sylvie Readman, À contretemps – René Viau, Utopia Out of Focus

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Portfolios
Authors: René Viau | Artists: Sylvie Readman

March 21, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — What do we see? Somewhere on the urban periphery, a parallelepiped of concrete topped with an azure tarp sits on a rectangle of asphalt. Elsewhere, the whitewashed wall of a shed rises behind a section of suspended electrical wires. We come upon other indeterminate pieces of land, other uninhabited buildings. The photographs’ titles correspond to the toponymy of industrial sectors that appear more or less abandoned…

Ewa Monika Zebrowski, Of time, lost – Paule Mackrous, One Imagination, a Thousand Stories

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Portfolios
Authors: Paule Mackrous | Artists: Ewa Monika Zebrowski

March 23, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — “The issue is clear: truth or life; history or art,” writes Nietzsche in the opening pages of his Seconde considération intempestive¹. The living, fragile and fleeting, are lost from the objective spectacle of history. This will remain so as long as we make history a succession of factual data rather than a return to an “internal time consciousness.”² Words engender linearity, whereas the experience of time is formed of simultaneities and twists.

Lynne Cohen, Photographies – Stephen Horne, Rooms of Screens/Screens of Rooms

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Portfolios
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Lynne Cohen

March 27, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — Lynne Cohen has been photographing generic architectural interior spaces for several decades. Photographing rooms is, and has always been, her subject. Some of these rooms are health spas, classrooms, and hotel lobbies, while others are more sinister – laboratories, control rooms, and military sites. In a Cohen photograph, however, even an innocent health and relaxation facility can appear in an unusually “posed” mode.

Places

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Portfolios
Artists: Ewa Monika Zebrowski, Lynne Cohen, Sylvie Readman

[Fall 2011] Being attentive to the environments that one passes through. all these passageways, these enigmatic and inhospitable spaces, all those buildings that one sees on urban access roads, sometimes abandoned, that compose a purely functional environment. This, compared to the old city, to sites shaped by time, proximity, a different pace of life … […]

Looking at Places

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Ewa Monika Zebrowski, Lynne Cohen, Sylvie Readman

[Fall 2011] Being attentive to the environments that one passes through. All these passageways, these enigmatic and inhospitable spaces: entrance halls, waiting rooms, and showrooms with incongruous décors, laboratory rooms with indecipherable functions. All these buildings that one sees on urban access roads, some of them abandoned, that compose a purely functional environment, with no […]

Ciel variable 89 – PLACES

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES

Anne-Marie Ninacs – Regarding Lucidity: Inward Views – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Interviews
Authors: Anne-Marie Ninacs, Jacques Doyon

October 27, 2016 [originally published in Spring 2011] — Anne-Marie Ninacs was the guest curator for the Mois de la Photo à Montréal 2011, with the theme Lucidity: Inward Views. From 2002 to 2006, Ninacs was the curator of contemporary art at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, where she organized the exhibitions Massimo Guerrera. Darboral, L’emploi du temps, Avancer dans le brouillard, and Chimère/Shimmer.

New and Worthy – Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre

Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre

[Spring/Summer 2011] Photography and national history Three books recently received combine photography and national history or national imaginary. Photography and Italy (London: Reaktion Books, 2011, Eng) by Maria Antonella Pelizzari offers a dialogue between the devel- opment of photography as a medium and the political, social, and cultural changes in Italy since its unification in […]