Marie-Jeanne Musiol, Prélèvements – Sylvain Campeau, Conduction lumineuse du vivant

Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Marie-Jeanne Musiol

[Winter 2005-2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Campeau examines the scope and consequences of what seems to be implied by the possibility that objects can produce their own visible radiation, thereby challenging the very notion of photographic […]

Michael Flomen, Photograms – James D. Campbell, A Palimpsest of Pale Fire: The Fabulist Photography of Michael Flomen

Ciel variable 70 - MATERIA ET LUMEN | Portfolios
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Michael Flomen

[Winter 2005-2006] Michael Flomen’s works encompass an abstract, oneiric space that we cannot easily reference, for it is openly ambiguous, hovering somewhere between the dream and the waking moment. Whether rain and snowfalls registering at night on handmade photograms (Teeming), the evidentiary bioluminescence of fireflies caught on photographic flypaper in the dead of night as […]

Cheryl Sourkes: Cam Work – Jessica Wyman, Cheryl Sourkes: Surveilling the Field

Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Portfolios
Authors: Jessica Wyman | Artists: Cheryl Sourkes

[Fall 2005] Cheryl Sourkes has been surfing and capturing webcam images for several years, and her work serves to articulate for viewers some of the ponderous questions that emerge in seeing the world differently through this particular technology. Sourkes’s current practice is not one of making images so much as it is one of selecting […]

Pierre Granche, Miroirs / reflets / trouées – Alain Laframboise, Dans la ville instable

Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Portfolios
Authors: Alain Laframboise | Artists: Pierre Granche

[Fall 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Highlighting the similarities between the convex mirror used by Pierre Granche in his series of photographs and Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1524), the mirror that Brunelleschi used in […]

SYN- : Prospectus, Ville intérieure, randonnée dans un hyperbâtiment – Johanne Sloan, Appropriating the Megastructure

Ciel variable 69 – BEHOLDING THE CITY | Portfolios
Authors: Johanne Sloan | Artists: SYN–

[Fall 2005] By Johanne Sloan SYN–’s Prospectus (2003–04)1 points to contradictions in the relationship between contemporary artists and the city. This sequence of eighty-one photographs shows the SYN– members wandering around and engaged in play at various locations in the “hyperbuilding” otherwise known as Montreal’s underground city. Their sensibility might be akin to that of […]

Denis Farley, Irradiations – Johanna Mizgala, Wanderings through Light

Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Portfolios
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Denis Farley

[Summer 2005] In his Irradiations series as in his earlier works, Denis Farley partakes in an ongoing investigation of the nature of photography as a self-conscious gesture. In a string of works produced following a site-specific group exhibition in the Canadian government’s once top-secret underground bunker, and now a decommissioned relic of the Cold War, […]

Liza Nguyen, Souvenirs du Vietnam – Octave Debary, Vietnam : photographies et éthique du souvenir

Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Portfolios
Authors: Octave Debary | Artists: Liza Nguyen

[Summer 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract What meaning should be given to the commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon? This text analyzes how Souvenirs du Vietnam, a work by Liza Nguyen, offers […]

Bertrand Carrière, Caux – Gary Michael Dault, CAUX: Photographs by Bertrand Carrière

Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Portfolios
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Bertrand Carrière

[Summer 2005] In three recent interrelated works, Bertrand Carrière explores ways of expressing the memories embedded in the landscape at the site of the Dieppe Raid of 1942. The Caux series constitutes a long meditation on the sense of purposelessness and loss embodied by that very landscape. It was preceded by Jubilee, an installation in […]

Melvin Charney, UN DICTIONNAIRE… série 100 : New York, 9/11/2001 – Anne Bénichou, Des ruines et des corps pour penser le monde, un entretien avec Melvin Charney

Ciel variable 68 – MEMORIES OF THE DISASTER | Portfolios
Authors: Anne Bénichou | Artists: Melvin Charney

[Summer 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract In the early 1970s, Melvin Charney began a work in progress, UN DICTIONNAIRE…, a collection of press-agency photographs, published in newspapers, in which buildings and cities involved in current events […]

David Claerbout, Moments réflexifs – Valérie Lamontagne, David Claerbout : le spectre du temps

Ciel variable 67 - STILL MOVING | Portfolios
Authors: Valérie Lamontagne | Artists: David Claerbout

[Spring 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract The author considers David Claerbout’s work in relation to the overlapping histories of cinema and photography and suggests that the etymological and perceptive frictions that have developed between these media […]

Stan Denniston, Time Passages – Cheryl Sourkes, Stan Denniston: Stills

Ciel variable 67 - STILL MOVING | Portfolios
Authors: Cheryl Sourkes | Artists: Stan Denniston

[Spring 2005] Using long, continuous video takes and the static camera position of the still photographer to capture what at first appears to be inert subject matter–geological formations, deserted highways and other abandoned sites—Stan Denniston’s ‘fixed focus’ movies invoke an uncanny temporal sensibility. Subject movement is minimal and unpredictable, defined as it is by the […]

Tetsuomi Anzai, Still Breathing – Cheryl Simon, Time Travels: Mixed-Media Works by Tetsuomi Anzai

Ciel variable 67 - STILL MOVING | Portfolios
Authors: Cheryl Simon | Artists: Tetsuomi Anzai

[Spring 2005] Each the product of a very particular combination of media generated imagery, Tetsuomi Anzai’s mixed media installation works offer unique perspectives on a world increasingly apprehended through pictures. Whether stills enlivened through video animation techniques, video loops upturned to approximate the live streaming of camera obscura technology, or satellite renderings rolled, spun and […]

Fiona Tan, Déprises identitaires – Vincent Bonin, L’emploi du temps : travail et désœuvrement dans Countenance de Fiona Tan

Ciel variable 67 - STILL MOVING | Portfolios
Authors: Vincent Bonin | Artists: Fiona Tan

[Spring 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract In the installation Countenance (2001), Fiona Tan uses film to quote the archiving and photographing methods behind August Sander’s photographic recension project Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (Men of the twentieth […]

Adad Hannah, Surface Tension – Will Straw, Adad Hannah: Struggling Against Time

Ciel variable 67 - STILL MOVING | Portfolios
Authors: Will Straw | Artists: Adad Hannah

[Spring 2005] On the very threshold of immobility, Adad Hannah’s works are initially interpreted by our eyes as being static images – only to eventually reveal subtle movements that betray their nature as works of video rather than of still photography. Recalling a history of negotiated relationships between the static and moving image, these revelations […]

Raymonde April – Jean-Claude Rochefort, Bifurcations. Notes et matériaux

Ciel variable 66B - RAYMONDE APRIL | Portfolios
Authors: Jean-Claude Rochefort | Artists: Raymonde April

[Spring 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract The author observes, first, that the artist maintains an emotional relationship with nature and that an ontology of the landscape is manifested in her work because there is a profound […]

Angela Grauerholz, images tirées du film Ephemeris (extraits)

Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Portfolios
Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Spring 2005] The question today is, however – perhaps has always been – how somebody can appropriate (in fact steal) somebody else’s doing and yet make something of it that is uniquely his own. In other words, the question is not what are the models to be followed or that are being followed, but what […]

Angela Grauerholz, Sans titre (washed water) (extraits)

Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Portfolios
Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Spring 2005]

Angela Grauerholz, Sans titre (circular) (extraits)

Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Portfolios
Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Spring 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Angela Grauerholz, Sans titre (artists regrouping) (extraits)

Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Portfolios
Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Spring 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Angela Grauerholz, Sans titre (Courting death) (extraits)

Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Portfolios
Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Spring 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Angela Grauerholz, Épiphytes (extraits)

Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Portfolios
Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Spring 2005] World-view and self-image are indissolubly intertwined with each other. The way man sees the world is the way he sees himself; the way he conceives himself is the way he conceives the world. Alterations in his view of the world lead to alterations in his view of himself and vice versa. ⎯ Christopher […]

Angela Grauerholz, Familiaris (extraits)

Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Portfolios
Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Spring 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Angela Grauerholz, La flâneuse (extraits)

Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Portfolios
Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Spring 2005] There is no question of inventing the flaneuse: the essential point is that such a character was rendered impossible by the sexual divisions of the nineteenth century. Nor is it appropriate to reject totally the existing literature on modernity, for the experiences it describes certainly defined a good deal of the lives of […]

Angela Grauerholz, Vorbilder (modèles)

Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Portfolios
Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Spring 2005]

Angela Grauerholz: Salle de lecture de l’artiste au travail

Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Portfolios
Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Spring 2005]

Klaus Scherübel – Reinhard Braun, The Artist at Work

Ciel variable 65 - PORTRAITS | Portfolios
Authors: Reinhard Braun | Artists: Klaus Scherübel

[Fall 2004] In his series Untitled (The Artist at Work), Klaus Scherübel presents a paradoxical system of references to myths and phantasms of modernism and to descriptive contexts of current art. To take the title or the visual appearance as a starting point already implies taking part in a discourse that is subverted by the […]

Hicham Benohoud, Version soft – Lyne Crevier, résister

Ciel variable 65 - PORTRAITS | Portfolios
Authors: Lyne Crevier | Artists: Hicham Benohoud

[Fall 2004] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract In his series of self-portraits Version soft, the Moroccan artist Hicham Benohoud has metamorphosed his features by “martyrizing” his head in harsh photographs recalling those in Photomatons or mug shots. […]

Pascal Grandmaison, Portraits – Christine Bernier, Cet autre regard du portrait

Ciel variable 65 - PORTRAITS | Portfolios
Authors: Christine Bernier | Artists: Pascal Grandmaison

[Fall 2004] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Pascal Grandmaison’s photographic and videographic work is often defined as renewing the concept of the portrait. This text explains that the innovation of Grandmaison’s portraits is situated more in the […]

Jason Salavon, Fuzzy Logic – Elizabeth Menon, The conceptual Aesthetic of Jason Salavon

Ciel variable 64 - TABLEAUX | Portfolios
Authors: Elizabeth Menon | Artists: Jason Salavon

[Summer 2004] Jason Salavon employs computers and code to transform material appropriated from popular culture. His work ranges from digital video installations to Web-based interactive works and works on computers to create paintings that blur the line between manmade and machine aesthetic. His photo and video-based print works cultivate a dual aesthetic of painterly veils […]

Louis Joncas, Detritus – George Bogardi

Ciel variable 64 - TABLEAUX | Portfolios
Authors: George Bogardi | Artists: Louis Joncas

[Summer 2004] The Detritus series is an ongoing investigation of Joncas’s material existence, informed by still-life painting and vanitas. The series depicts the detritus of domestic life and everyday survival. It questions rituals and banal chores – such as cleaning, eating, grooming, and consuming – that leave behind an endless trail of detritus. The objects […]

Gwenaël Bélanger, Chutes – Marie-Ève Charron, De la trajectoire dans la chute des corps

Ciel variable 64 - TABLEAUX | Portfolios
Authors: Marie-Ève Charron | Artists: Gwenaël Bélanger

[Summer 2004] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Gwenaël Bélanger’s series Chutes follows in the spirit of early-twentieth-century studies on transcription of movement. Each series uses a sequential modality to reconstitute the trajectory of everyday objects abandoned in […]

Sorel Cohen, Divans maudits – Sophie Mendelsohn and Krystel Wallet, D’un regard… à l’autre

Ciel variable 63 - PERSONA | Portfolios
Authors: Krystel Wallet, Sophie Mendelsohn | Artists: Sorel Cohen

[Spring 2004] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract During a stay in Paris, Sorel Cohen set up her camera in different psychoanalysts’ offices. The result was a series of images around the analyst’s couch, the body that we […]

Nikki S. Lee – Dayna McLeod, Stretching Identity to Fit: The Many Faces of Nikki S. Lee

Ciel variable 63 - PERSONA | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Nikki S. Lee

[Spring 2004] par Dayna McLeod In “Image #6” of Nikki Lee’s The Punk Project series, two punks are seated on the cement steps of an innocuous building. He has a closely cropped mohawk and wears camouflage pants with a leather jacket thrown across his lap. She wears ripped net stockings over striped tights, and a […]

Massimo Guerrera, Le temps de déclencher quelques ouvertures – Massimo Guerrera, Porus

Ciel variable 63 - PERSONA | Portfolios
Authors: Massimo Guerrera | Artists: Massimo Guerrera

[Spring 2004] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Yinka Shonibare, Journal d’un dandy victorien – Eduardo Ralickas, Yinka Shonibare: le dandysme et la figuration de l’histoire

Ciel variable 63 - PERSONA | Portfolios
Authors: Eduardo Ralickas | Artists: Yinka Shonibare

[Spring 2004] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Yinka Shonibare’s works can be characterized in terms of their powerful deconstruction of Western notions of identity. In this light, the artist’s embrace of the figure of the dandy is […]

The Bigger Picture – Karen Love, The Bigger Picture: Portraits from Ottawa

Ciel variable 62 - TERRITORY | IDENTITY | Portfolios
Authors: Karen Love | Artists: Alexandre Castonguay, Allan MacKay, Arnaud Maggs, Barbara Woodley, Charles Gagnon, Chris Lund, Chris Mikula, David Barbour, David Cation, Duncan Cameron, Evergon, Germaine Koh, Jeffrey Thomas, Jerry Grey, Justin Wonnacott, Ken Lum, Larissa Fassler, Lynn Ball, Max Dean, Michael Schreier, Michael Snow, Paul Couvrette, Rod MacIvor, Sylvain Cousineau, Tony Fouhse, Trevor Gould

[Winter 2003] The Bigger Picture: Portraits from Ottawa, organized for the Ottawa Art Gallery by Karen Love, gathers together over 200 Ottawa portraits by 78 image-makers, presented thematically in order to provoke a range of questions about how we understand the idea of a portrait. No longer simply an accurate depiction of physical characteristics or […]

Scott Walden, Unsettled – Scott Walden, Places Lost. In search of Newfoundland’s resettled communities

Ciel variable 62 - TERRITORY | IDENTITY | Portfolios
Authors: Scott Walden | Artists: Scott Walden

[Winter 2003] Scott Walden’s Unsettled was produced following a summer spent in Newfoundland photographing the remnants of abandoned coastal communities, casualties of government programs seeking to centralize the new province’s scattered population. The resulting book, Places Lost: In Search of Newfoundland’s Resettled Communities, gathers some forty images reproduced in duotone, along with many vintage photographs […]

Linea di Confine : William Guerrieri, Sergio Buffini, Marco Signorini, Paola di Bello, Guido Guidi – Michèle Cohen Hadria, Le lointain est ici

Ciel variable 62 - TERRITORY | IDENTITY | Portfolios
Authors: Michèle Cohen Hadria | Artists: Guido Guidi, Marco Signorini, Paola Di Bello, Sergio Buffini, William Guerrieri

[Winter 2003] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract The Linea de Confine movement in Emilie Romagne (northern Italy), both conceptual and empirical in its relationship with the territory, follows the lineage of Italian photography of the 1970s – […]

Yann Mingard and Alban Kakulya, À l’est d’un nouvel éden – Yann Mingard and Alban Kakulya, Une frontière à l’est d’un nouvel éden. Périple documenté sur les futures limites extérieures de l’Union européenne

Ciel variable 62 - TERRITORY | IDENTITY | Portfolios
Authors: Alban Kakulya, Yann Mingard | Artists: Alban Kakulya, Yann Mingard

[Winter 2003] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract From the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea stretches a strip of land more or less six hundred kilometres wide, inhabited by more than sixty million people belonging to seven […]

Stéphane Couturier, Villes génériques – Emmanuel Hermange, Plasticité de l’entropie urbaine

Ciel variable 61 - MODERNE | VERNACULAIRE | Portfolios
Authors: Emmanuel Hermange | Artists: Stéphane Couturier

[Summer 2003] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Stéphane Couturier’s Villes génériques series is a continuation of the photographic work on urban sites under construction that he has been producing for a number of years. This archaeology of […]

Arni Haraldsson, Israel, Jordan and South Africa – Jordan Strom, Posing Presidios: A Conversation with Arni Haraldsson

Ciel variable 61 - MODERNE | VERNACULAIRE | Portfolios
Authors: Jordan Strom | Artists: Arni Haraldsson

[Summer 2003] In parallel to his continuing dozen-year-long project, which addresses the livedness, context, and peculiarities of space in modernist architecture, Haraldsson’s recent photographic works focus on other grounds inherent to modernism, built space, and our relationships to them. In these recent parallel projects – the photographs of Jerusalem’s cityscapes and the Via Dolorosa, the […]

Marik Boudreau, Miradors – André Lamarre, L’œil de la montagne. Sur la recherche photographique de Marik Boudreau

Ciel variable 61 - MODERNE | VERNACULAIRE | Portfolios
Authors: André Lamarre | Artists: Marik Boudreau

[Summer 2003] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract With Miradors, which bears the subtitle Essai photographique sur l’érosion (Photographic essay on erosion), Marik Boudreau has produced a synthesis of her work on abandoned sites and urban ruins. An […]

Olivier Christinat, Portraits et nus – Lyne Crevier, Dévisager

Ciel variable 58 - NUDES AND PORTRAITS | Portfolios
Authors: Lyne Crevier | Artists: Olivier Christinat

[Summer 2002] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Olivier Christinat’s spare mises en scène form the canvas for portraits or nudes of young women in a sort of intimate encounter between artist and model that seems to overstep […]

Marisa Portolese, Belle de jour – Dayna McLeod, Tattooed innocence with post-punk appeal

Ciel variable 58 - NUDES AND PORTRAITS | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Marisa Portolese

[Summer 2002] Self-possessed women of all shapes, sizes, and ages, each fills the frame with intense looks, confidence, sex appeal, and power as she looks head-on into the camera’s lens and past, to the viewer. Compellingly seductive, these subjects pose for themselves and for the camera with a confronting gaze that is just as powerful. […]

Evergon, Evergon, Margaret and I – Alain Laframboise, Le miroir d’Evergon

Ciel variable 58 - NUDES AND PORTRAITS | Portfolios
Authors: Alain Laframboise | Artists: Evergon

[Summer 2002] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract The tradition of representing young women to emphasize the ephemeral nature of beauty is very old, as is that of showing older, physically worn women to encourage reflection on time’s […]

Isabelle Hayeur, Paysages incertains – Suzanne Paquet, Quelques fêlures

Ciel variable 57 – CONSTRUCTED LANDSCAPE | Portfolios
Authors: Suzanne Paquet | Artists: Isabelle Hayeur

[Spring 2002] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Isabelle Hayeur’s work points as much to the idea of “realism” in photography as to that of authenticity of the landscape(s). These are linked issues, since the landscape is probably […]

Manuel Piña, On Monuments – Petra Watson, The Photographs of Manuel Piña

Ciel variable 57 – CONSTRUCTED LANDSCAPE | Portfolios
Authors: Petra Watson | Artists: Manuel Piña

[Spring 2002] Unstable identities emerge in Manuel Piña’s mapping of place and historical past: memory assumes the form of the landscape itself. On Monuments comments on the rewriting of history, ideologies, and the obliteration of the past. Piña photographed sites where monuments were taken down during the 1959 Revolution. He presents these sites as discrete […]

Ivan Binet, Répertoire d’horizons – Sonia Pelletier, Nulle part chez nous

Ciel variable 57 – CONSTRUCTED LANDSCAPE | Portfolios
Authors: Sonia Pelletier | Artists: Ivan Binet

[Spring 2002] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Ivan Binet’s images are impossible panoramic views that retrace the wanderings of the photographer-walker in different regions of Quebec. First sketched out during the shooting, these panoramas truly take form […]

Ramona Ramlochand, Once Upon a Time . . . Ever After, a digital photographic panorama, 2001 – Ramona Ramlochand, Fragmentation

Ciel variable 56 - MAKING WORLDS | Portfolios
Authors: Ramona Ramlochand | Artists: Ramona Ramlochand

[Winter 2001-2002] Under the digital disney sky, the debris of contemporary life consolidates, piled together into a postcard from the edge. It is all sweetness and anxiety. The natural and unnatural, the real and the imagined, becoming one watery vista. By the falls I sat down and wept. This is my theme park. An MRI. […]

Veli Granö, Cosmologies tangibles – Veli Granö, Le collectionneur de collectionneurs « Des vies transformées en collection de photos »

Ciel variable 56 - MAKING WORLDS | Portfolios
Authors: Veli Granö | Artists: Veli Granö

[Winter 2001-2002] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Today’s collector is of a new kind: a historian, a restorer of meaning. This figure, the expert collector, shows us where our past is hidden and how we can rediscover […]

Carl Zimmerman, Landmarks – Robin Metcalfe, The Aesthetics of Power

Ciel variable 56 - MAKING WORLDS | Portfolios
Authors: Robin Metcalfe | Artists: Carl Zimmerman

[Winter 2001-2002] Zimmerman attributes to his photographs “an essentially utopian aesthetic with ambivalent understandings.” Humour, nostalgia, and critical deconstruction coexist in his work, as they often do in our responses to totalitarian aesthetics. “Fascinating fascism” shares its allure with the less radically discredited, but equally utopian, architectures of socialism and New Deal social democracy. by […]

Shirin Neshat Film, Video and Photo Works – Christine Ross, Occidentaliser le spectateur : Shirin Neshat, la différence de la différence

Ciel variable 55 – BOUNDARIES | Portfolios
Authors: Christine Ross | Artists: Shirin Neshat

[Fall 2001] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Imbued by the question of identity and addressing mainly Western viewers, Shirin Neshat’s production constantly negotiates the variety of perspectives (masculine, feminine, feminist, Middle Eastern, Western, Asian) that come together […]

Sophie Calle, L’erouv de Jérusalem

Ciel variable 55 – BOUNDARIES | Portfolios
Authors: Sophie Calle | Artists: Sophie Calle

[Fall 2001] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary According to Jewish law, complete rest is obligatory during Shabbat. The ban on working includes carrying any objects (keys, a book, a bag) outside the home. However, according to the […]

Jin-Me Yoon, Touring Home From Away – Shauna McCabe, Fissures

Ciel variable 55 – BOUNDARIES | Portfolios
Authors: Shauna McCabe | Artists: Jin-Me Yoon

[Fall 2001] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary A product of Yoon’s continuing engagement with landscapes characterized by “condensed” meanings and connotations, this project places representations of the tourist destination of Prince Edward Island and its associations of […]

Robin Collyer, The McCain Family Commission – Catherine Grout, Paysages

Ciel variable 54 - GARDENS-LANDSCAPES | Portfolios
Authors: Catherine Grout | Artists: Robin Collyer

[Spring 2001] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary A series of ten photographs made by Robin Collyer subtly responds to a private commission in memory of someone who has died. These views show various New Brunswick landscapes that […]

Michel Campeau, Arborescences – Robert Graham, Under a Campeau Blue Sky

Ciel variable 54 - GARDENS-LANDSCAPES | Portfolios
Authors: Robert Graham | Artists: Michel Campeau

[Spring 2001] . . . a late-summer bounty of natural and unnatural growth, the cultivated and the uncontrollable. For while this garden has its real-world aspect and can be found on a map, it serves for Campeau as the foliage in a narrative tour of an interior landscape, described in muted speech and in surroundings […]

Scott McFarland, Gardens, Vancouver- Christopher Brayshaw, Garden Optics

Ciel variable 54 - GARDENS-LANDSCAPES | Portfolios
Authors: Christopher Brayshaw | Artists: Scott McFarland

[Spring 2001] Scott McFarland’s recent photographs depict private gardens located in an exclusive Vancouver neighbourhood. The photographs, which include portrait studies of garden owners and workers, unpopulated landscapes, and images of security systems, make the private gardens built and maintained for their owners’ pleasure the subject of public contemplation and discussion. by Christopher Brayshaw The […]

Patrick Faigenbaum, Brême – Gregory Salzman, Realism with a Human Face

Ciel variable 53 - IDENTITIES | Portfolios
Authors: Gregory Salzman | Artists: Patrick Faigenbaum

[Winter 2000-2001] This project marks the first time that Faigenbaum photographed subjects with which he felt no special personal identification or emotional connection. The nature of the assignment and his lack of familiarity with the place prompted him to adopt a novel way of working that was more informal and impromptu than in previous works. […]

Alain Chagnon – Robert Graham, De villes en déserts: Alain Chagnon’s Recent Road Work

Ciel variable 51 – ELSEWERE… NOWHERE | Portfolios
Authors: Robert Graham | Artists: Alain Chagnon

[Summer 2000] by Robert Graham In June of 1998, fifty-year-old Quebec photographer Alain Chagnon undertook a journey. As a man and as a photographer, he was propelled in flight from the “here” of home in search of what must be found away and somewhere else. From this particular corner of the continent, he set out […]

Xavier Ribas, Un divertissement idéal

Ciel variable 51 – ELSEWERE… NOWHERE | Portfolios
Authors: Xavier Ribas | Artists: Xavier Ribas

[Summer 2000] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Our leisure activities are less and less distinguishable from models of productivity. Organized leisure has tentacles. It is probably to escape this logic that people meet spontaneously in less domesticated […]

Wanda Koop – Robin Laurence, See Everything/See Nothing

Ciel variable 51 – ELSEWERE… NOWHERE | Portfolios
Authors: Robin Laurence | Artists: Wanda Koop

[Summer 2000] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Best known as a painter, Wanda Koop is also a gifted videographer who produces scrolls of video stills as well as large-scale installations combining video projections and painting. Many of […]

Guy Lafontaine, Home Sweet Home – Suzie Larivée, Grandeur et misère du paysage urbain

Ciel variable 50 - APPROACHING THE PLACE | Portfolios
Authors: Suzie Larivée | Artists: Guy Lafontaine

[Spring 2000] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Since 1995, Guy Lafontaine has been working on a series of photographs examining transitional zones on the border of residential and industrial districts, mainly in neighbourhoods on the outskirts of […]

Nicole Jolicoeur, Images d’une ville. Corps de l’image

Ciel variable 50 - APPROACHING THE PLACE | Portfolios
Authors: Nicole Jolicoeur | Artists: Nicole Jolicoeur

[Spring 2000] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Geoffrey James, The Lethbridge Project – Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 50 - APPROACHING THE PLACE | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Geoffrey James

[Spring 2000] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary The Lethbridge Project looks at both the city and nature, and at their transformations. Geoffrey James evokes the way in which landscape, whether in the heart of the city or […]

Johanne Gagnon, Fonds culinaire, 1995-1998 – Jean-Émile Verdier, L’impasse de l’imaginaire

Ciel variable 49 - (THE OBJECT) | Portfolios
Authors: Jean-Émile Verdier | Artists: Johanne Gagnon

[Winter 1999-2000] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Fonds culinaire is a photographic stock-taking of the physical congestion caused by kitchen objects. Since 1990, Johanne Gagnon has been working on creating a legitimate description of a kitchen from […]

Robert Pelletier, Curiosité – Le chercheur de trésor, 1989 – Michel Campeau et Bertrand Carrière, Les histoires intrigantes et sans paroles d’un curieux reliquaire

Ciel variable 49 - (THE OBJECT) | Portfolios
Authors: Bertrand Carrière, Michel Campeau | Artists: Robert Pelletier

[Winter 1999-2000] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Intriguing, Wordless Stories from a Strange Reliquary The multi-paneled, serial works in Curiosité – Le Chercheur de trésor were the last made by Robert Pelleter before his death. They were […]

Robert ParkeHarrison – Sylvain Campeau, Écophilie

Ciel variable 49 - (THE OBJECT) | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Robert ParkeHarrison

[Winter 1999-2000] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Paradoxical: This is how Sylvain Campeau defines the works of Robert ParkeHarrison. It is a paradox of a Resurrection that cannot help but take part in the Apocalypse; the paradox […]

Bernard Plossu – Serge Tisseron, Une nouvelle mythologie familiale

Ciel variable 47 - AFFECTION | Portfolios
Authors: Serge Tisseron | Artists: Bernard Plossu

[Summer 1999] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary As we all know, the family is in crisis. Like a company that is running out of steam, it needs images to exalt its specificity. It is indisputable that affection […]

Laura Letinsky – Marie-Josée Jean, Petits écarts affectueux

Ciel variable 47 - AFFECTION | Portfolios
Authors: Marie-Josée Jean | Artists: Laura Letinsky

[Summer 1999] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary The author examines the expression and the modalities of communicating affection in a selection of Laura Letinsky’s works in which the complexity of the love relationships between men and women […]

Carl Bouchard – Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 47 - AFFECTION | Portfolios
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Carl Bouchard

[Summer 1999] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Carl Bouchard’s self-portraits are fictitious, emotional mises en scène, in which the laying bare of the body corresponds to the laying bare of feelings. Bouchard is a multi-disciplinary artist, and […]

Josef Wais, Krönungen – Leo Kandl

Ciel variable 46 - THE SUBJECT, THE AUTOPORTRAIT | Portfolios
Authors: Leo Kandl | Artists: Josef Wais

[Spring 1999] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Jeff Wall – Dot Tuer

Ciel variable 46 - THE SUBJECT, THE AUTOPORTRAIT | Portfolios
Authors: Dot Tuer | Artists: Jeff Wall

[Spring 1999] In Jeff Wall’s photographs, there is an attraction and deflection – a push and pull of ideological thrusts and formal repartées – that entraps the viewer. Standing in front of a large-scale back-lit Cibachrome, one is caught in the middle of an exquisitely choreographed duel between painting and photography. by Dot Tuer In […]

Denis Farley, Calibrated Presence – Élisabeth Recurt, Paysages étalonnés, « De la fixité de nos repères » (Extraits)

Ciel variable 46 - THE SUBJECT, THE AUTOPORTRAIT | Portfolios
Authors: Élisabeth Recurt | Artists: Denis Farley

[Spring 1999] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Yan Giguère – Jennifer Couëlle, Portrait de la lune en camion. Une table, des étoiles

Ciel variable 45 - (OFF CAMERA) | Portfolios
Authors: Jennifer Couëlle | Artists: Yan Giguère

[Winter 1998-1999] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary It has never been the aim of art photography to provide simple testimony to the unfurling of daily life – at least, not of its substance, its insipid ordinariness. The […]

Leo Divendal – Sylvain Campeau, Terezin. Théâtres d’ombres

Ciel variable 45 - (OFF CAMERA) | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Leo Divendal

[Winter 1998-1999] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary As a photographer, Leo Divendal is known for his recapturing of archival images, without added legend. In the series presented here, he accumulates portraits, park scenes, children’s games – all […]

Duane Michals – Jennifer Couëlle

Ciel variable 44 - THEATER OF REALITIES | Portfolios
Authors: Jennifer Couëlle | Artists: Duane Michals

This article was originally published only in French. No translation is available Summary We think of him when we think of photographic mise en scène – and of narrative sequences, and of the integration of hand­writing into photographs. When Duane Michals made his first photographic fictions in the mid-sixties, the practice was not entirely without […]

Andrea Szilasi – Francine Dagenais

Ciel variable 44 - THEATER OF REALITIES | Portfolios
Authors: Francine Dagenais | Artists: Andrea Szilasi

This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Andrea Szilasi finds her inspiration in science magazines and anatomy books. But however fascinated she may be with the inner workings of the human body, how it is quantified or depicted, hers […]

Holly King – Gary Michael Dault

Ciel variable 44 - THEATER OF REALITIES | Portfolios
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Holly King

[Fall 1998] by Gary Michael Dault Every photograph is constructed. In the usual order of events, however, a photograph is “constructed” first perceptually, then chemically  or is otherwise processed in the tiny silicon bath of the computer and, finally, as an artefact. Holly King’s photographs represent an amplification and a reversal of this order of […]

Mark Ruwedel, Pictures of Hell – Mark Ruwedel

Ciel variable 43 - TERRITORY AND LANDSCAPE | Portfolios
Authors: Mark Ruwedel | Artists: Mark Ruwedel

[Summer 1998] by Mark Ruwedel Once, from eastern ocean to western ocean, the land stretched away without names. Nameless headlands split the surf; nameless lakes reflected nameless mountains; and nameless rivers flowed through nameless valleys into nameless bays. — George R. Stewart, Names on the Land1 Devil’s Garden. The Devil’s Playground. The Devil’s Corral. Devil’s […]

Marlene Creates – Robin Metcalfe

Ciel variable 43 - TERRITORY AND LANDSCAPE | Portfolios
Authors: Robin Metcalfe | Artists: Marlene Creates

[Summer 1998] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. by Robin Metcalfe The photography-based art of Marlene Creates has long dealt with the relationship between marking and landscape. Her photographs function as a means of documenting that relationship and posing […]

Eileen Leier – Sylvain Campeau, Sur la piste de la ruée vers l’or

Ciel variable 43 - TERRITORY AND LANDSCAPE | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Eileen Leir

[Summer 1998] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Eileen Leier’s Sur la piste de la ruée vers l’or (On the gold-rush route) is a evidentiary installation that deals with the presence of remains and of photography in various […]

Petra Mueller

Ciel variable 42 - AUTHENTICITY 3 | Portfolios
Artists: Petra Mueller

[Spring 1998] Petra Mueller lives and works in Montreal. In 1992, she earned a master’s degree in fine arts from Concordia University, and she is currently teaching in a course on media and technology in Concordia’s communications department. Her work has been exhibited in Montreal and throughout Canada over the last number of years, and […]

Nathalie Caron

Ciel variable 42 - AUTHENTICITY 3 | Portfolios
Artists: Nathalie Caron

[Spring 1998] Nathalie Caron was born in Montreal. A multidisciplinary artist, she is a poet, photographer, and actor. Her work has been exhibited in a number of galleries, art centres, and museums in Quebec and Europe. Among her most recent exhibitions are Les Personnes, produced in collaboration with video artist Charles Guilbert and presented in […]

Gerald Van Der Kaap

Ciel variable 42 - AUTHENTICITY 3 | Portfolios
Artists: Gerald Van Der Kaap

[Spring 1998] KaapEngine (Prototype), ca. 1996 http://www.stedelijk.nl/capricorn/øøkaap/start.html Gerald Van Der Kaap lives and works in the Netherlands. His works have appeared in many museums, galleries, and contemporary art biennales throughout the world, and been widely published. He is currently working on transforming a new waste incinerator near the town of Enschede, the Netherlands, into a […]

Eugénie Shinkle – Céline Mayrand

Ciel variable 41 - AUTHENTICITY 2 | Portfolios
Authors: Céline Mayrand | Artists: Eugénie Shinkle

[Winter 1997-1998] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary With her exacerbated sensitivity and exposed emotions, Eugénie Schinkle draws us into the whirlpool of her febrile energy. She leads us to think of the photographic act as a form […]

Jocelyne Alloucherie – Gary Michael Dault, Jocelyne Alloucherie: Les Occidents

Ciel variable 41 - AUTHENTICITY 2 | Portfolios
Authors: Gary Michael Dault | Artists: Jocelyne Alloucherie

[Winter 1997-1998] by Gary Michael Dault She wanders the streets of twilight cities, Jocelyne Alloucherie tells me, Montreal and her native Quebec City, yes, and also the early-evening cities of Europe. She wanders, flâneuse, with a camera, exploring, as the cities turn haptic in the diminishing light and thickening darkness, the absorbing demineralization of a […]

Georges Rousse – Marie-Josée Jean, Georges Rousse: dévoilement

Ciel variable 41 - AUTHENTICITY 2 | Portfolios
Authors: Marie-Josée Jean | Artists: Georges Rousse

[Winter 1997-1998] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Loren Williams, Cabinet de curiosités – Pierre Blache

Ciel Variable 40 - THE UPCOMING GENERATION | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Blache | Artists: Loren Williams

[Fall 1997] by Pierre Blache Born in Creston, British Columbia, Loren Williams studied photography at David Thompson University, B.C., and at Concordia University, Montreal. For several years, her work has been closely tied the “found objects” that she collects and arranges according to a personal taxonomic system. In this context, she is interested in the […]

Mia Weinberg, Fractured Legacy – Pierre Blache

Ciel Variable 40 - THE UPCOMING GENERATION | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Blache | Artists: Mia Weinberg

[Fall 1997] by Pierre Blache Mia Weinberg has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, where she lives. Her artistic practice revolves around three axes: the notion of cultural displacement (diaspora), links between generations, and the influence of identity. In Fractured Legacy, she examines the […]

Xuân-Huy Nguyen, Compositions – Pierre Blache

Ciel Variable 40 - THE UPCOMING GENERATION | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Blache | Artists: Xuân-Huy Nguyen

[Fall 1997] by Pierre Blache A Montrealer of Vietnamese origin, Xuân-Huy Nguyen earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts (photography major) from Concordia University. With Compositions, Nguyen casts a critical eye on Quebec photography, which he feels is distant and bland. Appropriating images made by well-known photographers, he plays with irony and irreverence to shake […]

Janieta Eyre, Incarnations – Pierre Blache

Ciel Variable 40 - THE UPCOMING GENERATION | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Blache | Artists: Janita Eyre

[Fall 1997] by Pierre Blache Janieta Eyre studied photography at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, and has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Toronto. She lives and works in Toronto. Her work mixes fiction, history, culture, and memory in symbolically charged portraits. Reality loses its footing in these disturbing scenes, in […]

Ethan Eisenberg, Holyland: from the Time of the Peace Process – Pierre Blache

Ciel Variable 40 - THE UPCOMING GENERATION | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Blache | Artists: Ethan Eisenberg

[Fall 1997] by Pierre Blache Ethan Eisenberg has a master’s degree in fine arts (photography) from Concordia University, Montreal. He currently lives in Toronto, where he has been a freelance photographer since 1993. For the last three years, he has been involved in a documentary photography project in the heart of the occupied territory of […]

Allan Edgar, La Marque – Mark of the Hand – Pierre Blache

Ciel Variable 40 - THE UPCOMING GENERATION | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Blache | Artists: Allan Edgar

[Fall 1997] by Pierre Blache A native British Columbian, Allan Edgar has a fine-arts degree from Camosun Visual Arts College in Victoria and currently works and lives in Montreal. He works directly on large-format black-and-white negatives and on his final proofs, using, among other things, selective toning, varnishes, and abrasives. The result is very large […]

Charles Bergeron, Nulles parts – Pierre Blache

Ciel Variable 40 - THE UPCOMING GENERATION | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Blache | Artists: Charles Bergeron

[Fall 1997] by Pierre Blache A native of La Tuque, Quebec, Charles Bergeron studied visual arts at Université Laval, Quebec City, and Université du Québec à Montréal. He currently lives in Montreal. Trained mainly in sculpture and installation, he only recently discovered the possibilities offered by photography. His photographic “centrings” (his term) are used for […]

Dolores Baswick, The Transitional Place – Pierre Blache

Ciel Variable 40 - THE UPCOMING GENERATION | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Blache | Artists: Dolores Baswick

[Fall 1997] by Pierre Blache Dolores Baswick has been working as a commercial photographer for almost twenty years. She studied at Sheridan College of Applied Arts and Technology, in Oakville, Ontario, from 1976 to 1978, which enabled her to find work in corporate and advertising photography. In 1991, she registered at the Emily Carr College […]

Sara Angelucci, Evidence of Her Disappearance – Pierre Blache

Ciel Variable 40 - THE UPCOMING GENERATION | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Blache | Artists: Sara Angelucci

[Fall 1997] Sara Angelucci was born in Guelph, Ontario, where she earned a bachelor of fine arts; she is currently studying for a master’s degree in visual arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. For the past several years, her multimedia works, which include photography, have explored the notion of […]

Alain Laframboise, Stilleven – Jocelyne Lupien, L’inquiétante étrangeté des objets immobiles

Ciel variable 39 - AUTHENTICITY 1 | Portfolios
Authors: Jocelyne Lupien | Artists: Alain Laframboise

[Summer 1997] Alain Laframboise’s photographic stillevens are imbued with the specific rhetoric of the hyper-codified genre that is still-life: the deliberate placement of inanimate and enigmatic objects; directional, dramatic, theatrical illumination (chiaroscuro); flat, shallow background against which the objects are projected; striking trompe-l’œil effect (which photography does well); hidden symbolic content that invites reflection on […]

P.M. Hoblargan, Premier album 1855-1885 et Dernier album 1885-1923 – Juliet Hotbridge

Ciel variable 39 - AUTHENTICITY 1 | Portfolios
Authors: Juliet Hotbridge | Artists: P. M. Hoblargan

[Été 1997] The true, the false, the original, the copy, the authentic, the forgery; to distinguish them, evaluate them, then universalize the values – a problem that is almost insoluble, calling for responses that are multiple, mobile, and sometimes contradictory, depending on the civilization whose choices and rejections they govern. by Juliet Hotbridge Still confused […]

Arnaud Maggs, Notification – Russell Keziere, Convergence sans coïncidence

Ciel variable 39 - AUTHENTICITY 1 | Portfolios
Authors: Russell Keziere | Artists: Arnaud Maggs

[Summer 1997] We live in a time when all communication happens under a cloud of erasure. We are conditioned instinctively to call into ques­tion vested interests and hidden, undisclosed motives. In this cloud of postmodern skepticism, words and representations are equivocal – until proven innocent. We negate before we can feel safe to affirm. By […]

Anne-Marie Zeppetelli, Bodies and Traces – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 38 - DESIRE | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Anne-Marie Zeppetelli

[Spring 1997] The self-portrait is the “secret scheme of all autobiography.” Here, in fact, the story of events experienced by the narrator is less important than is the portrait she offers of herself in action. Organized in themes rather than along a narrative line, the self-portrait is constructed through a series of “reminders, returns, superimpositions, […]

Anne Arden McDonald – Black-and-White Dreams, Céline Mayrand

Ciel variable 38 - DESIRE | Portfolios
Authors: Céline Mayrand | Artists: Anne Arden McDonald

[Spring 1997] by Céline Mayrand To escape the unbearable feeling of powerlessness to which her human limitations confine her, Anne Arden McDonald exceeds them. She imagines herself free to float and breathe in the water and to fly in the air. For this young artist-photographer, self-representation quickly imposed itself as a necessity; even when she […]

Diane Thorneycroft – Annie Molin Vasseur

Ciel variable 38 - DESIRE | Portfolios
Authors: Annie Molin Vasseur | Artists: Diana Thorneycroft

[Spring 1997] There are girls and women who don’t want to believe everything that is said about them, or they would have to dismantle all the legends! This ontological need leads to an often terrifying plunge into the unconscious – the path Diana Thorneycroft takes in her search for her identity. by Annie Molin Vasseur […]

André Jasinski – Jennifer Couëlle, Slowness Conquered

Ciel variable 37 - THE PLACE | Portfolios
Authors: Jennifer Couëlle | Artists: André Jasinski

[Hiver 1996-1997] There is the moon, the darkness, the ghost of industry. André Jasinski photographs urban remains at night. He highlights their grandeur and lonely poetry. And he sniffs out the scourges that shaped them. by Jennifer Couëlle Although the city and its structure were signs of modern dynamism and faith in machines, celebrated for […]

Lynne Cohen – Catherine Pomparat, Plural Infinitive

Ciel variable 37 - THE PLACE | Portfolios
Authors: Catherine Pomparat | Artists: Lynne Cohen

[Winter 1996-1997] The odour of photographed things is tenacious and disconcerting: acrid, tepid, tart, icy, fetid, chemical, hygienic, aseptic, nauseating. An odour of “miserable humanity” in an auditorium, a waiting room, a dance hall, a bourgeois living room, an observation room, a treatment room, a shooting gallery, a classroom, a hairdressing salon, an exhibition hall, […]

Miki Gingras – Anne-Marie Garceau, Against All Reason

Ciel variable 37 - THE PLACE | Portfolios
Authors: Anne-Marie Garceau | Artists: Miki Gingras

by Anne-Marie Garceau Aside from the demolition machines attacking a distant wing of the boarding school, the site is deserted. The photographer enters the condemned building, determined to make the silence speak. For some twenty years, the boarding school’s classrooms, dormitories, corridors, and bathrooms have been haunted by the dreams and fears of the children […]

Serge Clément – Jean-Claude Lemagny, De l’apparition à la présence

Ciel variable 36 -"POETIC" PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios
Authors: Jean-Claude Lemagny | Artists: Serge Clément

[Fall 1996] Clément’s technique as an artist does not differ from his technique as a reporter-photographer, which he is as well. But it is absolutely enough to “bring the earth closer and establish a world,” to take up Martin Heidegger’s fundamental thought. “Bring the earth closer” means bringing to the surface that which is in […]

Katherine Knight, I became unconscious

Ciel variable 36 -"POETIC" PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios
Artists: Katherine Knight

[Fall 1996] by Katherine Knight Looking down I saw that my left trouser leg was burned off. I pulled the rip cord of my parachute and checked my descent with a jerk. About twenty feet above the water I attempted to undo my parachute, failed and flopped into the sea with it billowing around me. […]

Arnaud Claass – Jean Arrouye, L’art aporétique d’Arnaud Claass

Ciel variable 36 -"POETIC" PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios
Authors: Jean Arrouye | Artists: Arnaud Claass

[Fall 1996] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Marc Tessier – David Liss, Tarot

Ciel variable 35 - DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios
Authors: David Liss | Artists: Marc Tessier

[Summer 1996] by David Liss Marc Tessier is a poet, a storyteller, an alchemist, an artist. His films, comics, and photographs are the matter by which he transforms mundane existence and ordinary reality into a mythological universe of imaginative possibility and adventure. He playfully fabricates magical landscapes, fairy-tale environments, and surrealistic worlds of wonder that […]

Marie-Jeanne Musiol- Marie-Josée Jean, Champs de l’apparition

Ciel variable 35 - DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios
Authors: Marie-Josée Jean | Artists: Marie-Jeanne Musiol

[Été 1996] by Marie-Josée Jean Marie-Jeanne Musiol’s images invest the territory of invisibility by inscribing subtle traces of emanations on their surface – more precisely, the luminous emanations commonly known as “auras.” These auras, once sunk deep into the secret of their own invisibility, have been revealed thanks to the Kirlian apparatus, a vision-enhancing machine […]

André Clément, André Clément, Vues en abîmes

Ciel variable 35 - DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios
Artists: Serge Clément

[Summer 1996] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Daniel Kieffer, A derivà – Charles Perraton, A derivà. Au gré de l’événement, sous la gouverne du sensible

Ciel variable 34 - UNTITLED | Portfolios
Authors: Charles Perraton | Artists: Daniel Kieffer

[Spring 1996] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Daniel Kieffer’s photographs constantly transport the viewer from one side of the lens to the other. With his camera at the service of sensation rather than the “beautiful image,” Kieffer […]

Ruth Kaplan, Bathing Work – Robert Legendre, Looks and Murmurs

Ciel variable 34 - UNTITLED | Portfolios
Authors: Robert Legendre | Artists: Ruth Kaplan

[Spring 1996] by Robert Legendre To look directly at Ruth Kaplan’s photographs, one must go beyond the “at first glance” voyeurism induced by curiosity. Instead, one must look closely at these works, which portray a world of tranquillity and peace, imbued with tender sensuality, where time moves slowly. Freed of the constraints of an outdated, […]

Franck Michel, Sansui – Suzie Larivée, Of Mountains and Water

Ciel variable 34 - UNTITLED | Portfolios
Authors: Suzie Larivée | Artists: Franck Michel

[Spring 1996] by Suzie Larivée The garden is an image of the world San for the mountain. Sui for water. The sand becomes water. The stone becomes a mountain. The Japanese garden is a theatre: in transposing a landscape, reducing an existing natural site, it brings together an ancient arrangement of water, stones, sand, hilly […]

Paul Lowry – Sylvain Campeau, Phantasma

Ciel variable 33 - 001100110110001111001011 | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Paul Lowry

[Winter 1995-1996] by Sylvain Campeau Paul Lowry’s work, from Photographs from the Grand Academy of Lagado (1989-90) through Copulation Studies (1993) to Man Figure (1995), has been inspired by various sources. One of the most important is the photographic system of J.H. Lamprey, a British anthropologist who tried to create a comparative visual catalogue of different […]

Ron Levine, Kinship of the Eastern – Mona Hakim, Ties to Down East

Ciel variable 33 - 001100110110001111001011 | Portfolios
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Ron Levine

[Winter 1995-1996] by Mona Hakim Looking at Ron Levine’s photographs, I was reminded of a New York photographer’s humorous group portraits that appeared several years ago in the magazine Photo. These photographs of members of a wide variety of leagues and associations manifested a typically American mania for transfiguring ordinary people into celebrities. In mobilizing […]

Ginette Bouchard, Floris Umbra – Robert Legendre, On Floris Umbra

Ciel variable 33 - 001100110110001111001011 | Portfolios
Authors: Robert Legendre | Artists: Ginette Bouchard

[Winter 1995-1996] by Robert Legendre For more than ten years, Ginette Bouchard has been exploring, within her artistic photographic research, old techniques such as platinum/palladium proofs. Curiously, the artist’s attraction to old techniques has led to a profound interest in computer technologies in visual art. She takes pictures of the elements of her images using […]

Musée du Québec – Presence of Photography in the Musée du Québec Collection – Claude Thibault

Ciel variable 32 - UNTITLED + SUPPLEMENT | Portfolios
Authors: Claude Thibault | Artists: Charles Gagnon, Frederick Simpson Coburn, Serge Clément

[Fall 1995] by Claude Thibault Curator of Photography, Musée du Québec In early 1994, the Musée du Québec decided to create a sector devoted specifically to photography. A number of reasons sparked the adoption of this policy. First, the project fits naturally into its development program in its role of curator of our artistic heritage […]

Clara Gutsche, David Miller – Pierre Dessureault, Dialogue (Supplement)

Ciel variable 32 - UNTITLED + SUPPLEMENT | Portfolios
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Clara Gutsche, David Miller

[Fall 1995] by Pierre Dessureault Associated curator, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa Since settling in Montreal on their arrival in Canada, Clara Gutsche and David Miller have worked together on many projects, producing a remarkable body of photographic work that portrays the city and its residents. There are few examples of couples in photography […]

Randy Koroluk – Mona Hakim, Circumvolution

Ciel variable 32 - UNTITLED + SUPPLEMENT | Portfolios
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Randy Koroluk

[Fall 1995] by Mona Hakim Randy Koroluk’s photographs do not lend themselves to being viewed in a contemplative manner. Our eye ceaselessly wanders from plane to plane, finally being propelled in circumvolutions in many of the works. In other cases, our gaze glides along the linear marks of the motifs that stream down from the […]