Editorial

Editorial: Listening to the living

Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Frédéric Lavoie, Sara A. Tremblay, Sara Angelucci

[Fall 2025] Editorial by Jacques Doyon In this issue, the plant world is under attentive investigation. Garden flowers and plants, and the terrains and territories around them, are examined, studied, recorded, sometimes manipulated, in an attempt to capture the living microcosm that they are home to. Fruits, flowers, leaves, and branches – and insects, fungi, […]

Editorial: Tracing Identities Constructed through Time

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Ed Pien, Fatine-Violette Sabiri

[Summer 2025] Editorial by Jacques Doyon The three artist books featured in this issue were founded on a quest for identity rooted in duality, encounter, and memory. They bear testament to a search for self, built from life stories, diasporic links, transmission of heritages. Photographic portraits and self-portraits are central to these illustrated narratives that […]

Editorial: Elsewhere as Here

Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

Editorial by Jacques Doyon for Ciel variable no. 128, on the idea of a change of scene.

Women at War

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

Hieratic portraits, solemn and emblematic of women in solidarity, standing tall and fighting. Figures of transmission and resistance: sisters, fighters, queens, attacking gamesmanship, fighting for a change in the actual rules of power.

Off the Path

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Editorial
Authors: Jérôme Delgado | Artists: Francis Alÿs, Justin Wonnacott, Patrick Beaulieu

A trajectory involves movement and, implicitly, evolution or even advancement (read, progress). It is the contrary of a point, which represents immobility, stopping, the status quo. As we move from point A to point B, we change position, context, point of view. The trajectories followed by the three artists in our thematic section show them on the lookout, searching for something that can open new perspectives – and our minds.

Rhizomes, Atlases, and Herbaria

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Bertrand Carrière, Éric Tabuchi, Nelly Monnier, Suzanne Lafont

[Winter 2024] By Jacques Doyon Cities are born from clusters of structures that provide shelter for human life and activities. Through them flow grids of thoroughfares that form patterns of movement and exchange. That’s what an urban agglomeration is: a dense knot, large or small, placed at a certain point in a rhizomatic lattice that […]

What is to be seen?

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Adad Hannah, Nicolas Baier, Thomas Demand

[Fall 2023] By Jacques Doyon These are images that catch our attention and intensify our gaze. What they show us is clear and precise, and yet there is something we can’t place, something that encourages us to look more closely and to question the context of their production. In Nicolas Baier’s work, it is the […]

Elective Affinities

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Evergon, Michèle Pearson Clarke, Raymonde April

[Summer 2023] By Jacques Doyon Theatres of the Intimate, the major exhibition of Evergon’s work at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, mea- sures the scope of an approach that celebrates the gay body and homosexual desire. Throughout his body of work, Evergon deploys a highly personal theatre of intimate relationships, desires, and impulses […]

Another World

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Editorial
Authors: Jérôme Delgado | Artists: Éliane Excoffier, Emmanuelle Léonard

[Winter 2023] By Jérôme Delgado. No matter what the adage says, all cats are not grey in the dark. Night-time brings out a throng of personalities, countless activities, and – without a shadow of a doubt – a rich colour palette.

Looking for Places that Speak to Us

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Justine Kurland, Pierre Blache

[Fall 2022] By Jacques Doyon Walking in the city, travelling down country roads, discovering the country, exploring foreign capitals – in short, getting moving – we confront different perspectives, contextualize or a rm our values, and take the measure of the world we live in. Such mobility, such constant travels, are the basis for the […]

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 […]

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 […]

Exhibiting Photography to Talk about Global Changes

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2021] By Jacques Doyon The thematic section in this issue presents three recent exhibitions that show how photography can actively contribute to shaping a vision of the world. The first, which features quantity and diversity of images, indicates how an accumulation of points of view and subjects addressed makes it possible to override the […]

What Is It Exactly about Human Life?

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

In the feature section of this issue, we encounter three artists, three aesthetic approaches that converge in a certain ironic distance. One, more erudite, draws on the layers of cultural history; another, more narrative, unfolds an autofiction through subtle touches and existential resonances; the last, more direct, affirms the subjectivity of a framing, of a gaze. What, in the end, of the visible and the invisible? What kind of knowledge helps us live better? And what do all these small things that go off track tell us about the state of the world?

Projecting Ourselves into the World Around Us — Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2021] By Jacques Doyon What do the most distant, wild, silent landscapes tell us? How do landscapes of our childhood, those that awoke us to the world, shape us? What reflections of our own future do we find in the chaos of urban sites? Landscapes are like mirrors, utterly shaped by human presence. The […]

Pandemic Vertigo — Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Summer 2020] By Jacques Doyon I’m writing this editorial at a time when, to general surprise, paralysis of a signiﬁcant portion of human activity is gradually spreading across the globe (with some 2.5 billion people in conﬁnement right now). Suddenly, the unthinkable has happened. The immutable rumble of economic activity spurred on by the desire […]

The Aesthetics of the Political

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2020] In the thematic section of this issue, we take a look at collective action in society. Against a background of social conflict and war, the artists evoke the impact of collective actions on the common good by scrutinizing multitudes of media images that help to form our relationship with the world. Through re-examination […]

Gender Boundaries

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2019] By Jacques Doyon The artists brought together in this issue’s thematic section explore diﬀerent issues related to the boundaries of sexual identity and their transgression. Personas, transvestism, and role mutations are core to these artists’ approaches, as they address various issues fundamental to establishing a society based on inclusion rather than on narrow […]

Assembling Images

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Summer 2019] By Jacques Doyon Three recent exhibitions, by two artists and one collector, oﬀer a rare look at the act of collecting. The thematic section in this issue features diﬀerent types of collections of images, all of which involve a rereading, a recontextualization: highlighting a way of working that traverses and structures an artist’s […]

The Materiality of Colour

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2019] By Jacques Doyon From the manipulation of light (through decomposition, combination of layers, or diffraction effects) to work on the supporting medium (film, photographic paper, walls) to searching out pictorial compositions on city streets, a space of exploration opens up for photography around the various manifestations of colour. The result is images that […]

Crossing Borders

Ciel variable 110 - MIGRATION | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2018] By Jacques Doyon More than thresholds, borders have become a kind of non-place – extra-national zones – where migrants’ identities and statuses are examined and held in suspension for periods that are increasingly long and undetermined. In this issue, we examine certain aspects of the crossing of borders with works that explore how […]

Reactivated Memories

Ciel variable 109 - REVISIT | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

The works brought together in this issue look back at events in relatively recent history that have reverberated to the present day. These are prolific works, with multiple iterations, embodied in artistic forms and processes that reflect the complexity of their subjects: the mobility of fragments of the Berlin Wall, the exhibition at the Christian […]

Making visible

Ciel variable 108 - GOING PUBLIC | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2018] By Jacques Doyon This issue’s thematic section presents works that come from a wide variety of places and times, but all are marked by the notion of public visibility. These three bodies of work cover a wide spectrum of what defines the public space for artistic expression, ranging from the concrete civic and […]

Three Moments of Ruin

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2017 ] — Editorial of Ciel variable 105 – Ruins

Metonymic Motifs

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Alain Lefort, Denis Farley, Jocelyn Philibert

Each series of images in this issue presents, in a way, work on a motif – a live view of the landscape, in the tradition of landscape painters. Capturing the infinite variations of trees, icebergs, or clouds under different conditions certainly testifies to an interest in nature, but perhaps even more in how it is […]

Neighbourhood Lives

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2017] It is particularly interesting to present the series of images that Robert Walker has made on the subject of the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhood – where he was born and currently lives – in light of the festivities for Montreal’s 375th anniversary. The focus of these celebrations – optimistic and perhaps a bit facile – […]

Another look at things

Ciel variable 104 - FROM ANOTHER ANGLE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Marisa Portolese, Yoanis Menge

[Fall 2016] The works in this issue’s thematic section are anchored in realities diametrically opposed to each other – the seal hunt, social marginality, and representation of women – and are from different times. These works nevertheless come together in their challenging of prejudices and dominant thought systems. In fact, each proposes to portray people […]

This Nature that Is Our World

Ciel variable 103 - NATURE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Geneviève Chevalier, Isabelle Hayeur, Jessica Auer

[Spring/Summer 2016] There are places where nature’s presence is more intensely felt, where the question of the city’s interrelations with its natural environment emerges more spontaneously. Certain circumstances are also conducive to raising such reflections – among them, sense of unfamiliarity experienced during a stay abroad, obvious deterioration in the equilibrium or beauty of a […]

Far Away, So Close…

Ciel variable 102 - FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Alejandro Cartagena, Julian Germain, Raymonde April

[Winter 2016] What can hold things together and forge intersections in universes as different as the ones gathered in these pages, if it is not that they address a few aspects of our common condition that is increasingly shaped by the current path of globalization? The opening of borders in the contemporary era, inaugurated […]

Fantasizing

Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

Is fantasizing always diametrically opposed to the truth? Or does it tend to become an inherent component of reality – to blend with it, be superimposed on it – to the point that the two shape each other? The recent Bugingo affair – involving a Montreal journalist who apparently invented a series of facts and […]

CV100! . . . And what comes next?

Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

Publishing a contemporary art magazine specializing in photography in 2015 is more relevant than ever. Simply think of all the magazines, galleries, exhibition centres, and events (Mois de la photo and photographic encounters of all kinds) that exist and are being created all over the world around the photographic image. Of course, the time has […]

Environments

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

We are pleased to present in this issue the first thematic section put together by Alexis Desgagnés in his new position as associate editor of the magazine. The section, bearing on the notion of habitat, juxtaposes recent works by photographers Normand Rajotte and Stephen Gill, each of whom stands out for a field practice adapted […]

The Analogue and the Abstract

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Henri Venne, Jacinthe Lessard-L., Jon Knowles, Lorna Bauer, Thomas Ruff

Each in its way, the works in this issue’s portfolio speak of photography and analogue images by inscribing them in other artistic media (digital simulation, film, video, sculpture, painting). The imprint of light is thus materialized in abstract, simplified forms that multiply the images’ referential registers while relativizing the privileged link between photography and the […]

Dignity and Distinction

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Christian Tagliavini, Gabriel Coutu-Dumont, Pierre Gonnord

What, in fact, could the people (gypsies, miners, aristocrats, models, night owls, and others) gathered here in portraits have in common but the dignity conferred upon them by the photographers who took their picture? These artists’ approaches also share crossreferences, as well as photographic and pictorial skills displayed in chiaroscuros, framings, poses, textures and drapings […]

Making Image

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Jacynthe Carrier, Kim Waldron, Marisa Portolese

The thematic section of this issue presents recent works by three Montreal artists from the perspective of the performative dimension of their images. In these works, the artists stage bodies in situations of intimacy, intrusive proximity, or confrontation with their own fears, to bring to light how loved ones, strangers, and even animals help to […]

Broadening the Public Space

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

The thematic section CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC examines some of the issues related to the digital regime of images and their circulation on networks. It explores the many correspondences and reciprocities that are being woven between concrete spaces and various technological devices, whether portable (smartphones, applications of all types, geolocation instruments) or anchored in […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Faces: Beyond Appearances

Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: JJ Levine, Martin Schoeller, Tony Fouhse

[Spring/Summer 2011] In this issue, queers, media darlings, Aboriginals, female bodybuilders, and crack addicts form a highly heterogeneous portrait gallery that challenges our ideas about identity. These unsettling images reveal unexpected strengths or vulnerabilities, leading us to re-evaluate our perceptions. They captivate us, enticing us to stop and study a series of details that prove […]

Narrative Series

Ciel variable 87 – SERIES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Alain Pratte, Chuck Samuels, Michel Campeau, Yan Giguère

[Winter 2011] The works presented in this issue are characterized by the accumulation of a large number of images and the creation of series that may be systematic, or may be intuitive and fragmentary. In some of these works we can discern an iterative mode that operates in the formal arrangement, the object of investigation, […]

Documents

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2010] by Jacques Doyon MoMA’s major retrospective of the work of Marina Abramović marks museum institutions’ full recognition of the field of performance. In a way, this exhibition is the logical outcome of a movement of reactualization of historic performances that has been underway for more than a decade and to which Abramowic has […]

Representation of conflict

Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Spring 2010] by Jacques Doyon This issue looks at the representation of conflicts and wars. Whether they are distant battles, terrorist attacks, or riots taking place in the heart of our cities, their communication to the public is often dominated by spectacularization and slanted views. The artists whose works brought together here address situations that […]

Faces and Places

Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Spring 2010] by Jacques Doyon This issue presents portraits of people from all walks of life, most of them photographed in their interiors. There are also views of private places filled with things – décor, furniture – that testify to a presence. It is possible to think that individuality, self-representation, is manifested in a person’s […]

The space of the magazine

Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Christian Boltanski, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Michael Snow, Ron Terada

[Fall 2009] by Jacques Doyon What do the images in a magazine say? What is revealed by the reiteration of certain types of images – as well as their format, positioning, and grouping? Photographs are central to the definition of magazines, often equal in importance to textual content. For the image, the magazine goes beyond […]

Photography as Public Art

Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Summer 2009] by Jacques Doyon This issue offers some preliminary observations on the presence of art photography in urban public art. When we think of “public art,” the governmental public art programs in effect in Quebec and Montreal for several decades immediately spring to mind. Photography, however, has not been well represented in these programs. […]

Dusk, storm, flood

Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Spring 2009] by Jacques Doyon In this issue, we bring together images testifying to the impacts of accelerated modernization in today’s China. The photographers who made them have varying degrees of professional experience linked to commissions for the media, corporations, or advertising. They have nevertheless cultivated a personal vision and produced photographic series based on […]

Visual Literacy

Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

by Jacques Doyon The image bank is an archive structured by selection, indexing, and thematic cross-referencing procedures that determine how it is used. Artists appropriate this mechanism to explore the issues in visual culture and the contemporary future of the “virtual museum” prefigured by Malraux. They plead fundamentally for an attentive reading of images and […]

Contemporary Flâneurs

Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Summer 2008] by Jacques Doyon Photographing the street, over time, to record the evolution of the city and how it is used is a strategy that remains current. In these pages, it reveals the survival of small businesses in the era of globalization of markets, it allows us to follow the radical transformation of a […]

A Few Case Studies

Ciel variable 78 - COLLECTING PHOTOGRAPHY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Spring 2008] by Jacques Doyon Photography is becoming an increasingly important component of private collections. Recognition of the wealth and diversity of the photographic tradition, as well as a significant rise in the value of photographs on the art market, have accompanied this evolution. That is why we have chosen, for this issue, to highlight collections […]

A redesign of the magazine for its twenty years

Ciel variable 77 – CULTURAL TOURISM | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2007] by Jacques Doyon Ciel variable is twenty years old! Over the years, the magazine has undergone several metamorphoses in order to better reflect the evolution in photographic practice, the broadening of its field of application, its recognition by the art world, and changes in its institutional environment. As the only bilingual photography magazine […]

Conceptual Mapping

Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Summer 2007] by Jacques Doyon The works presented in this issue form conceptual mappings of territories in the midst of redefinition: the Internet, the natural environment, and circulation hubs. There is no cartography in the literal sense here; rather, these metaphorical mappings use the tools of cartography for investigations and approaches that examine our relationship […]

Advertising Culture

Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2006-2007] by Jacques Doyon It is not surprising that the world of advertising has become an object of investigation and aesthetic appropriation for contemporary artists. Advertising has an important place in Western culture. It is omnipresent in the urban environment, and it literally inundates the communications media, in which it rivals news, entertainment, and […]

Staging Anxiety

Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2006] by Jacques Doyon The images brought together in this issue fall under the rubric of the “staged” photography. They are inscribed within a current that has flowed throughout the history of photography, as the exhibition Acting the Part: Photography as Theatre, currently on at the National Gallery of Canada, brilliantly demonstrates. These practices […]

Image as Performance

Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Summer 2006] by Jacques Doyon Instructions: define a field of operations that is compatible with the camera’s field, determine the procedures for choosing objects and the type of actions to produce, decide on a duration, insert a body into the recording field, perform the planned manipulations or interactions, and then re-evaluate the results of the […]

Image World

Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Spring 2006] by Jacques Doyon In this issue, we feature works that, in their profusion and scope, offer a glimpse at the condition of the world as it is manifested and revealed through the mechanisms for fabrication and circulation of images. These image systems are of different dimensions, ranging from identity as it is defined […]

That which we cannot see

Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2005-2006] by Jacques Doyon Seeing better, seeing farther; disrupting the representation, dissolving it: these approaches seem contradictory. Yet, paradoxically, they hew to a single frontier: that of the visible and representable, that of the limit of our capacity to see and our perceptual expectations. They meet in a common exploration of light as a […]

Beholding the City

Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2005] by Jacques Doyon This issue is about our ways of apprehending, representing, and acting in the contemporary city. The works presented here are all characterized by the inclusion within the images of a multiplicity of points of view and a distinct process of observation. They examine different aspects of an urbanity that is […]

Memories of the Disaster

Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Summer 2005] by Jacques Doyon The works in this issue fall under the sign of things that are beyond comprehension. The list of catastrophic events that have left bitter traces on our democratic ideals in the last half-century is long. Current events dealt with in contemporary visual arts bring to mind some of these unimaginable […]

Still moving

Ciel variable 67 - STILL MOVING | Editorial
Authors: Cheryl Simon

[Spring 2005] by Cheryl Simon The photo-based installation projects featured in this special issue of Ciel variable exhibit a paradoxical sense of temporality. Although all are presented as time-based installations, hence moving imagery, the prevailing temporal logic characterizing this body of work is that of stillness. For this reason, the temporal sensibility here is more […]

New Directions

Ciel variable 66B - RAYMONDE APRIL | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Raymonde April

[Spring 2005] by Jacques Doyon This issue of CV ciel variable is extraordinary in more than one way. Our portfolio pages are devoted exclusively to presenting a work that we feel is particularly important, Reading Room for the Working Artist, Angela Grauerholz’s most recent piece. This issue also includes an insert, produced in collaboration with […]

Readings

Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Angela Grauerholz

Enigmatic Portraits

Ciel variable 65 - PORTRAITS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2004] by Jacques Doyon This issue contains examples of current portrait practices that can be associated with various sub-categories of the genre: group of young people posing in the studio, series of self-portraits inspired by a play on the mask, the ﬁgure of the artist in the presence of his working materials. As different […]

Photographic “tableaux”

Ciel variable 64 - TABLEAUX | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Summer 2004] by Jacques Doyon The optical devices, the renderings of light and perspectives, and the compositional modes inherited from the pictorial tradition form, even today, one of the foundations of our modes of representation, including for media based on the recording of the real and on digitization. The search for artistic legitimacy has long […]

Persona

Ciel variable 63 - PERSONA | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Spring 2004] by Jacques Doyon The works brought together in this issue offer a variety of avenues for understanding the ways in which the mise en scène of the self is created in response to the other and how this representation is received. Their grounds of exploration are diametrically opposed: from aristocratic dandyism to the […]

Territory and Identity

Ciel variable 62 - TERRITORY | IDENTITY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2003] by Jacques Doyon Territory is one of the bases of identity. We are made of the places where we grow up and the communities into which we integrate ourselves, whether they are local or national, professional, personal, or linked to daily life. Each dimension of our pluralistic identities is materialized in concrete spaces, […]

Exponential Modernity

Ciel variable 61 - MODERNE | VERNACULAIRE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Summer 2003] by Jacques Doyon In this issue, we delve into modern and vernacular architecture in countries, regions, and cities on the margins of the industrialized West. Architecture, the landscape, and the city are captured in a distanced way. No ethnographic inquiry, no deep documentary research, few interior photographs; instead, the emphasis is on façades […]

Panorama, Mapping, Panoscopy

Ciel variable 60 - VISION | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Spring 2003] by Jacques Doyon The artworks presented in this issue make manifest the constraints intrinsic to the tools of vision. They inscribe in the image itself traces of the prostheses, framings, and postures inherent to the photographic act, and in opposition to the referential consensus they offer an exploration of the conditions of the […]

Activating the Archive

Ciel variable 59 - ARCHIVES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2002] by Jacques Doyon This issue features the works of contemporary artists whose work involves the photographic archive. Because of its documentary aspect, photography was put to use in archives early and became an important component. In fact, it was this aspect that long kept photography from being recognized by the art world. Paradoxically, […]

Poses and Gazes

Ciel variable 58 - NUDES AND PORTRAITS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Summer 2002] by Jacques Doyon Evergon, Marisa Portolese, and Olivier Christinat offer three very different ways of presenting the female body. Juxtaposed as they are here, they both encounter and confront beauty and age, attraction and maintaining distance, self-affirmation and abandonment in the other’s gaze. Nude or in intimate garb, all of these women are […]

A Constructed Landscape

Ciel variable 57 – CONSTRUCTED LANDSCAPE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2001-2002] by Jacques Doyon In spite of the diversity of their modalities and subjects, the works brought together here are notable for their common interest in the sutures and marks in the landscape, the zones where significant transformations and their underlying issues are revealed surreptitiously or, on the contrary, concealed. These fault lines, or […]

On a Global Scale

Ciel variable 56 - MAKING WORLDS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2001-2002] by Jacques Doyon The works in this issue will seem, at first glance, diametrically opposed to each other. They involve very different subjects, from monumental architecture (Carl Zimmerman) to the world of collectors (Veli Granõ) to the ruins and waste of consumer society (Ramona Ramlochand). And their visual means – their modes of […]

The Shattering Image

Ciel variable 55 – BOUNDARIES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2001] by Jacques Doyon The terrorist attack of September 11 took the impact of the media image to new heights, with the inclusion in its scenario of the moment when various cameras enabled the entire world to witness the event live and left us for hours in fear of what might come next. For […]

Garden-Landscapes

Ciel variable 54 - GARDENS-LANDSCAPES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Spring 2001] by Jacques Doyon The photographs of gardens and landscapes presented here are not about looking at plants, flowers, and trees for themselves, in the sense of botanical documentation. Rather, they attempt to highlight what rules over the arrangement of or investment in such places and what is at play in our reading of […]

Shifting and conflicting states

Ciel variable 53 - IDENTITIES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2000-2001] by Jacques Doyon Identity is a precarious notion, constantly being redefined, at the intersection of many dimensions of belonging and identification. It is a self-definition, by and through the view of others. Identity is always a question of positionings and negotiations. The part of it that may seem to be inherent or original […]

Everyday Objects

Ciel variable 52 - EVERYDAY OBJECTS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2000] by Jacques Doyon The way we glance at objects in a familiar environment could be the connection between the photographic works assembled for this issue. Whether these objects are contained within the household, a workplace, or a small business, they inhabit and condition our spaces and ways of life. For Nicolas Baier, the […]

Elsewhere … Nowhere

Ciel variable 51 – ELSEWERE… NOWHERE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

by Jacques Doyon Travel is an inherent aspect of contemporary civilization. Whatever the distance, we have to see other places. We are all tourists, in one way or another, always foreigners to someone or some society, which we observe with mixed feelings of curiosity, empathy, rejection, or fear. The image has become the heart of […]

Approaches to sites

Ciel variable 50 - APPROACHING THE PLACE | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Spring 2000] by Jacques Doyon The city, a constant subject of photography, distills all of the issues of society. It is both centre and periphery, a nucleus made of contradictory and hierarchical strata shooting out roots to invade an ever-broader territory. In this issue, we find images that are concerned not so much with the […]

Editorial

Ciel variable 49 - (THE OBJECT) | Editorial
Authors: Franck Michel

[Winter 1999-2000] by Franck Michel All objects are both bases for relations and communications, signposts for our dreams, admitted or secret, and tools that we use to assimilate the world.1 — Serge Tisseron We have not often dealt with objects in these pages. Following a suggestion by Jennifer Couëlle, we decided that it was high […]

Editorial

Ciel variable 48 – QUEBEC PHOTO, THE 90S | Editorial
Authors: Franck Michel

[Fall 1999] by Franck Michel To mark Mois de la Photo à Montréal and the end of the millennium, issue 48 of CVphoto takes stock of Quebec photography in the nineties.Texts by Martha Langford and Mona Hakim and an interview with Élène Tremblay by Jennifer Couëlle sketch a portrait of a decade that was particularly […]

Vivid Images

Ciel variable 47 - AFFECTION | Editorial
Authors: Jennifer Couëlle

[Summer 1999] by Jennifer Couëlle It serves sometimes friendship, sometimes love. It is synonymous with both tenderness and desire. It conveys kindness and can lead to passion, but also subsists in simple pleasure. For affection, above all, means interest: in a person, a place, a climate, a phenomenon, and – why not? – an object. […]

The Ridiculed Image

Ciel variable 46 - THE SUBJECT, THE AUTOPORTRAIT | Editorial
Authors: Franck Michel

[Spring 1999] by Franck Michel In 1997, Jean Beaudry began to shoot a documentary on Quebec photography.1 Featuring an introduction that traces the history of photography in Quebec, interviews with people active in the photography milieu, and exhibition scenes, the film, L’objectif subjectif, follows three Montreal photographers – Raymonde April, Pierre Guimond, and Gilbert Duclos […]

Editorial

Ciel variable 45 - (OFF CAMERA) | Editorial
Authors: Franck Michel

[Winter 1998-1999] by Franck Michel The second edition of the Salon Paris-Photo recently took place in France. Presented at the same time as the Mois de la Photo à Paris, this event involved more than eighty exhibitions from all over the world, especially Europe and North America. Most of them were oriented toward sales and […]

CV44

Ciel variable 44 - THEATER OF REALITIES | Editorial
Authors: Franck Michel

[Fall 1998] by Franck Michel As we all know, photography now plays a preponderant role on the contemporary-art scene. The autumn cultural season in Quebec provides ample proof of this with a particularly rich programme of photographic exhibitions. To begin with, there is the first Biennale de Montréal, organized by the Centre international d’art contemporain, […]

CV43

Ciel variable 43 - TERRITORY AND LANDSCAPE | Editorial
Authors: Franck Michel

[Summer 1998] by Franck Michel During a recent trip abroad, I had an opportunity to meet with a number of photography specialists, including publishers from various countries. These meetings enabled me to take stock of the state of contemporary-photography magazines throughout the world. The situation is not wonderful. Over the last two years, many of […]

CV42

Ciel variable 42 - AUTHENTICITY 3 | Editorial
Authors: Franck Michel

[Spring 1998] by Franck Michel The Internet, that network of networks, is now a part of daily life for many of us; we surf the ’Net looking for things or just for entertainment. For artists, this communications tool comprises a new area of exploration with immense potential. Some use it as the main support for […]

CV41

Ciel variable 41 - AUTHENTICITY 2 | Editorial
Authors: Franck Michel

[Winter 1997-1998] by Franck Michel As I was writing this editorial, I learned that Claude Thibeault, curator of the photography collection at the Musée du Québec, has lost his job. Four years ago, the Musée du Québec set up a collection dedicated exclusively to photography and appointed Mr. Thibeault to run it, showing its desire […]

CV40

Ciel Variable 40 - THE UPCOMING GENERATION | Editorial
Authors: Franck Michel

[Fall 1997] by Franck Michel Since its inception, CVphoto has favoured new currents in its choice of both artists and writers. In fact, we feel that a magazine dedicated to contemporary photography should provide some recognition to young artists and writers. And so, this year, our participation in LE MOIS DE LA PHOTO À MONTRÉAL […]

Authenticity

Ciel variable 39 - AUTHENTICITY 1 | Editorial
Authors: Franck Michel

[Summer 1997] by Franck Michel This issue of CVphoto is the first in a trilogy devoted to the overarching notion of authenticity. The growing use of digital technologies in the various fields of photography, and the upheavals this has caused, has made this debate particularly timely and essential. In this issue, we will explore more […]

CV38

Ciel variable 38 - DESIRE | Editorial
Authors: Franck Michel

[Spring 1997] by Franck Michel For CVphoto, 1997 promises to be a very exciting year. With promotional and subscription campaigns, partnerships, launches, and lectures, we are putting forth our energy and openness in an effort to increase our visibility in Quebec, Canada, and abroad. Our first “operation” will be a random draw among new subscribers […]

CV37

Ciel variable 37 - THE PLACE | Editorial
Authors: Franck Michel

[Winter 1996-1997] by Franck Michel CVphoto, as our readers have undoubtedly noticed, has been progressively acquiring a new image; we have improved the overall graphic layout and made some changes to the cover page. As of this issue, the space allotted to exhibition reviews has been expanded. From now on, we will be able to […]

The Odour of the Planet

Ciel variable 36 -"POETIC" PHOTOGRAPHY | Editorial
Authors: Franck Michel

[Fall 1996] by Franck Michel Not one day passes that the media don’t mention the issues of globalization, internationalization, and disappearing borders. Our planet is, after all, becoming quite small. Starting with this issue, CVphoto has decided to join in the party. From now on, this magazine will no longer deal exclusively with photography from […]

The “ça a été” of the “Has Been”

Ciel variable 35 - DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY | Editorial
Authors: Robert Legendre

[Summer 1996] by Robert Legendre Recently I perused, not for the first time, La Matière, l’ombre, la fiction,1 a catalogue published to accompany the exhibition of the same name presented in the Colbert Gallery of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 1994 and 1995. Jean-Claude Lemagny, the exhibition curator, wrote most of the texts in […]

Each Person’s Fate …

Ciel variable 34 - UNTITLED | Editorial
Authors: Robert Legendre

[Spring 1996] by Robert Legendre “Each person’s fate is linked to the source of his or her dignity.”1 And at the moment, CVphoto’s dignity is to survive with pleasure. That is why we are starting, with this issue, to publish texts the content of which will no doubt interest all of our readers. We believe […]

00110011 01100011 11001011

Ciel variable 33 - 001100110110001111001011 | Editorial
Authors: Robert Legendre

[Winter 1995-1996] by Robert Legendre Since it was invented, photography has evolved constantly. The portfolio presenting some of Ginette Bouchard’s work published in this issue of CVphoto, as well as Carol Dallaire’s in issue 32, provides me with a pretext to reflect on the orientation toward a new technology. There has been a quiet movement […]

Editorial

Ciel variable 32 - UNTITLED + SUPPLEMENT | Editorial
Authors: Robert Legendre

[Fall 1995] by Robert Legendre Major artistic events both in concept and in scale, the MOIS DE LA PHOTO events are biennial exhibitions held in a number of big cities around the world. For the past eight years, under the auspices of the Vox Populi group, Montreal has been Canada’s host city for this event. […]

Money can’t buy happiness

Ciel variable 31 - UNTITLED | Editorial
Authors: Robert Legendre

[Summer 1995] by Robert Legendre Money can’t buy happiness: it allows one to suffer comfortably!1 CVphoto began its bilingual venture as of issue 24. Initially, we published translated summaries of our French and English articles, then we became more ambitious and opted for complete translations. Although satisfying, the enterprise proved to be costly. With the […]

Rallying Resistance

Ciel variable 30 - UNTITLED | Editorial
Authors: Marcel Blouin

[Spring 1995] by Marcel Blouin Onee again, the words “budgetary cuts” are on the rise. My commitment to the field of photography has been active since 1980, and it seems to me that these words, synonymous with worry, have been uttered for the thousandth time. With the exception that this time, however, the abyss into […]

CV29

Ciel variable 29 - UNTITLED | Editorial
Authors: Robert Legendre

by Robert Legendre What follows is a request for moral support. The board of directors and editorial committee of CVphotois seeking the sympathy of certain supporters of the arts, of photography in particular, and of its contributors. As readers of the magazine, you too may voice your support and appreciation. We would very much appreciate […]

Photography As an Eclectic Specificity

Ciel variable 28 - PHOTO, SPECIFICITY, ECLECTISM | Editorial
Authors: Marcel Blouin

[Fall 1994] by Marcel Blouin Over the past 10 or 15 years, the medium of photography has found its way into the fields and definition of visual arts, contemporary arts and post-modernism. Not only did photography find its way, but it acquired both a privileged and considerable place in contemporary artistic production. Its letters patent […]

And Come What May (Variations on a Diary, Continued…)!

Ciel variable 27 - PERSONAL DIARIES | Editorial
Authors: Robert Legendre

[Summer 1994] by Robert Legendre May 6, 1994 I seem to recall a short piece published a few weeks back in the Montreal newspaper La Presse. It alleged that certain members of the board of directors of the Université de Montréal were discreetly reaping fringe benefits, over and above their considerable emoluments. May 7, 1994 […]

Don’t make any waves!

Ciel variable 26 - DOCUMENTARY | Editorial
Authors: Robert Legendre

[Spring 1994] by Robert Legendre Dear Jacques, Dear Luc, In CV Photo‘s recent editorial (No.26), Marcel Blouin discussed the lack of perceptiveness (and lack of open-mindedness and of culture, I might add) of certain journalists, critics, essayists and thinkers in the analyses they make of art — in general, and that which has come to […]

Contemporary Art Is and Must Be

Ciel variable 25 - UNTITLED | Editorial
Authors: Marcel Blouin

[Winter 1993] by Marcel Blouin Art is looking for itself. Does not art look for itself and question itself? Would it be more accurate to say, rather, that art helps to throw light on the human being who is looking for himself? In a time when no one, anywhere, wishes to question things indeed, even […]

L’épaule à la roue!

Ciel variable 24 - Untitled | Editorial
Authors: Robert Legendre

[Fall 1993] by Robert Legendre It has now been more than a year since Marcel Blouin, Serge Clément and myself took over the managing of CV photo, maintaining the views and stances of the Board of Directors of les Productions Ciel Variable, its publisher. With the publishing of Issue Number 20 in September 1992, the […]

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