[Winter 2025]
Sites of Photographic Knowledge
by Sophie Bertrand
Sites of Photographic Knowledge – Sophie Bertrand, Montreal, FAEP and Artexte, 2021–2023, seven tomes
[EXCERPT]
In 2016, Martha Langford, the eminent art historian and director of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, organized a collective of scholars and other specialists in art theory and research around a common interest: photography. Formes actuelles de l’expérience photographique: Épistémologies, pratiques, histoires (FAEP) organizes sessions, including at the Universities Art Association of Canada, to reflect on what it calls “sites of photographic knowledge.” A seven-volume collection published by Artexte, Sites of Photographic Knowledge, is based on the explorations undertaken during these sessions, as well as on the expertise of researchers whose work – seen through the prism of art practices, historical approaches, or theoretical propositions – has been gathered to examine the complexity of the “field of photographic studies.”
Translated by Käthe Roth
[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: Sites of Photographic Knowledge]
Photographer, author, and independent curator Sophie Bertrand is interested in the formation of new visual narratives that create a dialogue between archives and images. She holds a master’s degree in museology and is a lecturer at the Collège de photographie Marsan and associate co-editor of Vie des arts. A regular contributor to Ciel variable, she is the author of Agence Stock Photo – Une histoire du photojournalisme au Québec (Les éditions du passage, 2024).