Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING

Editorial: A Passion for Images

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Christos Dikeakos, Michel Campeau, Sara Knelman

[Winter 2026] A Passion for Images by Jacques Doyon Each of the series presented in this issue bespeaks a passion for images. Assembled by artists and a writer – all of whom are both collectors, archivists, and documentarians – are portraits of British Columbian collectors of contemporary and Indigenous art, archival images that pay tribute […]

Thematic presentation: Collecting

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Christos Dikeakos, Michel Campeau, Sara Knelman

The thematic dossier of this issue, titled Collecting, brings together series by artists and a writer— Christos Dikeakos, Michel Campeau, and Sara Knelman. Their work invites readers to explore portraits of collectors, archival materials that pay tribute to darkroom practices, and a century of images depicting women reading, highlighting the significance of the gestures, forms of knowledge, and modes of engagement that shape and circulate culture.

Christos Dikeakos, The Collectors – Karen Henry, Picturing West Coast Collections

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Portfolios
Authors: Karen Henry | Artists: Christos Dikeakos

Presented as a collectors’ collection, Christos Dikeakos’s portrait series reflects the richness and diversity of people who are engaged in and fervent about amassing works for the pleasure of living with them. The images, varied and sumptuous, immerse us in worlds manifestly shaped by passion. In her essay, Karen Henry shows how Dikeakos draws on an ecosystem that serves art, its preservation and its sharing.

Michel Campeau, Gestes et rituels de la chambre noire – Mona Hakim, An Affective Typology of Photographic Knowledge

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Portfolios
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Michel Campeau

A studious scrutinizer and inveterate gleaner, Michel Campeau offers a series of photographs conceived as a typology of the gestures and rituals inherent to darkroom practice. The work of a practitioner who brings images of the past back to life, his book presents, often with a touch of humour, an archaeological gaze at an almost-obsolescent technology. For Mona Hakim, the project takes a humanist approach, highlighting the labour and inventiveness of people who have remained anonymous.

Sara Knelman, Lady Readers – Cheryl Simon, Sovereign Subjects

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Portfolios
Authors: Cheryl Simon | Artists: Sara Knelman

This unusual collection of hundreds of vernacular images, gathered by Sara Knelman, reflects the evolution of photographic techniques and the shifting place of women in society, juxtaposing leisure and lightness with more studious, professional attitudes. A true manifesto that frames reading as an act of women’s social empowerment, the book also invites a careful appreciation of images presented without commentary beyond the sparse notes on their backs.

Andrew Jackson, Emotional Geography – Rose Henriquez

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Essays, Focus
Artists: Andrew Jackson

Invited by the McCord Stewart Museum to photograph a Montreal neighbourhood, his own, Andrew Jackson offers a sensitive portrait of the Black community of Little Burgundy. His gaze, as Rose Henriquez notes, aligns with theories on the racialization of space and the spatialization of race. In this way, Andrew Jackson gives each of his subjects “the possibility of appropriating how one is represented, choosing how and when to be seen.”

WALKIE TALKIE, Photography Bogged Down in the Crevices of the Internet – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés

[Winter 2026] Photography Bogged Down in the Crevices of the Internet by Alexis Desgagnés [EXCERPT] “Yo! We’re back with another episode of Walkie Talkie!” That’s how Paulie B, the nickname of the New York photographer and content creator Paul Baldonado, introduces the videos in his Walkie Talkie series. As I write this article, the series, […]

Clara Gutsche, On Depicting the Immediate and the Enigmatic – Earl Miller

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Essays, Focus
Authors: Earl Miller | Artists: Clara Gutsche

As the recipient of a major award (the 2024 Scotiabank Photography Award), Clara Gutsche was the subject of a retrospective highlighting her interest in communities and architecture. In his essay based on his visit to The Image Centre, Earl Miller reviews each of the series on display and observes how age, the passing of the years, or “ the uncanny filter of skewed time”, as he writes, have shaped the artist.

Skawennati, Welcome to the Dreamhouse – Julie Graff

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Julie Graff | Artists: Skawennati

A key figure in media arts and cyberspace, Skawennati speculates on fairer futures more conducive to the flourishing of Indigenous people. The retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada presented her renowned machinimas and machinimagraphs (films and images related to virtual environments), as well as installations that, according to Julie Graff, allowed viewers to navigate between different degrees of realism. Organized around a theme with multiple meanings, the exhibition addressed both “the lack of Indigenous representation” and “colonial narratives of stasis and disappearance.”

Julianknxx, Chorus in Rememory of Flight – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Julianknxx

The exhibition circulated by London’s Barbican Centre and seen by Sylvain Campeau in Lisbon reflected Julianknxx’s commitment to the African diaspora in Europe. Originally from Sierra Leone, the England-based artist explored, most notably in a monumental three-screen video, the presence of Black bodies in cities where racism remains latent. The result, described by the critic as “astounding,” asserted that the renewal of this population’s identity enriches society.

Jacynthe Carrier, du seuil à la cime – Jean-Michel Quirion

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean-Michel Quirion | Artists: Jacynthe Carrier

Jacynthe Carrier’s works are among those that brush past us like a breath, according to Jean-Michel Quirion. Better still, he writes, they “reach out and softly embrace us” in his review of du seuil à la cime. The video and photographic installations that formed the exhibition revealed the life cycles animating an urban wasteland. Through the addition of performative actions, the artist renders it welcoming, turning it into a place to inhabit, where one can “make territory together.”

Simon Émond, Phobos Deimos – Bernard Lamarche

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Bernard Lamarche | Artists: Simon Émond

Adapted from a photographic book, the exhibition Phobos Deimos took the form of a labyrinth, in which Simon Émond evoked the figures of Fear and Terror, as well as that of the monster. The transition from the “invocatory cry” of the original project to an immersive experience of the images was a success, according to Bernard Lamarche. “We may emerge unscathed from [our encounter with the monster],” he writes, “or, as this exhibition did so well, it will swallow us.”

Sébastien Michaud, Façonner son sentier – Mariane Tremblay

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mariane Tremblay | Artists: Sébastien Michaud

Like a walk through the forest, Sébastien Michaud’s exhibition featured around twenty “picture or sculpture stations” made from manipulated and distorted prints. Before these photographs of nature, Mariane Tremblay saw an invitation to an introspective journey, to the “let themselves become forest” advocated by philosopher Baptiste Morizot. She writes that our relationship with the living world in the face of the ecological crisis depends on the human capacity to change and adapt.

Patrick Dionne et Miki Gingras, Uchronie – Marcel Blouin

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Marcel Blouin | Artists: Miki Gingras, Patrick Dionne

A humanist-leaning exhibition, with a focus on “visceral contestation and disturbing police repression,” Uchronie drew on image-based practices, social sciences, and philosophy. The works of Patrick Dionne and Miki Gingras, where fiction and documentation brush against each other, recall those of Gisèle Freund or Donigan Cumming, according to Marcel Blouin. Uchronie “intelligently avoiding the shoals of objective pseudo-documentation and appealing to the people concerned […] to show what needs to show,” he writes.

Yan Giguère, Somme toute – Charlotte Lalou Rousseau

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charlotte Lalou Rousseau | Artists: Yan Giguère

[Winter 2026] Somme toute by Charlotte Lalou Rousseau Occurrence, espace d’art et d’essai contemporains, Montréal 10.04.2025 — 14.06.2025 [EXCERPT] In his exhibition Somme toute, Yan Giguère presented twelve photographic assemblages from his eponymous project of fourteen “stations” – Giguère’s word for them – which totalled 242 analogue images. Their composition and form of installation testified […]

Marie-Alice Dumont. In Conversation with Raymonde April – Hélène Samson

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Hélène Samson | Artists: Marie-Alice Dumont, Raymonde April

An unlikely meeting between two artists—Marie-Alice Dumont, a historic figure in Québec photography as one of the first women in the profession, and Raymonde April, from the contemporary scene—this exhibition at the Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent brought their images together through a fluid installation. From their aesthetic disparity (the singular gaze of one, the poetic polysemy of the other) emerged an empathy toward the subjects and a connection with everyday life, materiality, and the rural landscape, noted Hélène Samson.

Michel-Hardy Vallée, Premières planches. Photos de John Max – Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Lectures, Readings
Authors: Fanny Bieth | Artists: Michel-Hardy Vallée

This volume devoted to the formative years of photographer John Max, “as his professional status grew” is based on the discovery of previously unseen images that remained at the contact-sheet stage. Beyond offering a return to the 1950s and 1960s, Premières planches pays tribute to work done quietly, sheltered from view. “They reveal the swarm of experience behind the apparent coherence – before the selection and refinement – inscribing images, people, and illustrious moments in the shared continuum made of micro-narratives and multiple social groups,” comments Fanny Bieth.

Sandra Brewster, Blur – Sofia Belmenouar

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Lectures, Readings
Authors: Sofia Belmenouar | Artists: Sandra Brewster

First presented as an exhibition, Sandra Brewster’s Blur brings out, in book form, the tactile and shifting dimension of the images. “As if it were a flipbook – the portraits begin to dance in my hands” writes Safia Belmenouar. This also reactivates “the very core of Brewster’s approach: to capture identity through its movement, its constitutive instability.” Marked by printing accidents and a lack of sharpness, the work as a whole presents itself as an act of resistance against representations imposed by colonial history.

David Hlynsky, A Focusing Appliance – Kenneth Hayes

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Lectures, Readings
Authors: Kenneth Hayes | Artists: David Hlynsky

For this book alternating images, reflections, and anecdotes, David Hlynsky drew on his lived experience as a photographer, teacher, and father. Neither annals nor a theoretical essay, “the book reads as notes on a life-long captivation by photography . . . [The images] feature much careful observation and a quick visual wit” writes Kenneth Hayes. He invokes a wide range of authors, from Marshall McLuhan to Jonathan Crary, including Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag, to explain Hlynsky’s “postmodern, quirky, and highly self-conscious” work.

Michel-Hardy Vallée, Focus on Quebec Photography – An interview by Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Entrevues, paroles
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Michel-Hardy Vallée

A web-based and educational project, Mise au point sur la photographie québécoise offers a rare—if not the only—history of the discipline as it has unfolded in Quebec since the first daguerreotype. One of its creator, Michel Hardy-Vallée, explains the choice of themes and monographic essays: “ We really wanted to foreground the issue of uses, which give access to an entire spectrum of relationships. Who uses photography, where, when, and why?” he explains in an interview conducted by Charles Guilbert.

Ciel variable 131 – Collecting

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING

[Winter 2026]

This issue brings together three bodies of work united by a shared passion for images: Christos Dikeakos’s portraits of art collectors, Michel Campeau’s extensive archive-based series celebrating the gestures and rituals of the darkroom, and Sara Knelman’s unusual collection of vernacular photographs of women reading across a century. Together, these projects highlight the gestures, knowledge, and commitments that shape culture, ensure its transmission, and affirm the essential place of images in our lives.

Taxonomy navigation

← Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS