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…

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Book Reviews
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…

New and Worthy – Sonia Pelletier

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Book Reviews
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 […]

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.

Ciel variable 93 – FORENSICS

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.