Bertille Bak, In the Eddies of Globalization – Fabien Pinaroli

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Essays
Authors: Fabien Pinaroli | Artists: Bertille Bak

The exhibition Abus de souffle featured a selection of works produced by Bertille Bak over the last ten years – works that Fabien Pinaroli, in his essay, calls “economic and political fabulations.” The video installations and objects on display, which were made in cooperation with communities caught up in the eddies of globalization in Bolivia, Morocco, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, can be considered tools of resistance.

Suzan Vachon, The Atlas: A Word – Edward Pérez-González

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Essays
Authors: Edward Pérez-González | Artists: Suzan Vachon

Atlas, nébuleuses du Sphinx, an exhibition in which Suzan Vachon staged her own imagination, includes works by sixteen artists but is articulated mainly, as Edward Pérez-González points out in his essay, around “constellations of hyper-connected images in arbitrary arrangements of meanings and shapes.” The five sections form a nebula with “a wealth of blurry edges and imprecise, sometimes confused relationships.”

Kim Waldron, A Society Made in the Images of Oneself – Bernard Schütze

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Essays
Authors: Bernard Schütze | Artists: Kim Waldron

The works in the retrospective Kim Waldron ltée: société civile, rooted in a reflection of the museological process, illustrate the experiments and issues that Waldron took on by inserting herself into real-life contexts such as family life, labour, and corporate finance.

Kim Waldron

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS

Deanna Bowen, The Artist as Avenger – Cheryl Simon

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Essays
Authors: Cheryl Simon | Artists: Deanna Bowen

In her essay, Cheryl Simon looks at two projects in which the artist Deanna Bowen examined the relations of influence and identity at the foundation of Canadian history. One project took the form of a mural that highlighted resistance to Black and Jewish immigration; in the other, an exhibition, Bowen looked back to a time when Montreal’s Golden Square Mile neighbourhood was the epicentre of the country’s (white and Anglo-Saxon) power.

Claudia Andujar, Activism Beyond Images – André-Louis Paré

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Essays
Authors: André-Louis Paré | Artists: Claudia Andujar

[Summer 2024] Activism Beyond Images by André-Louis Paré [EXCERPT] The exhibition Claudia Andujar and the Yanomami Struggle features the work of the Brazilian photographer and activist Claudia Andujar (born Claudine Haas in 1931, in Neuchâtel, Switzerland). Her Jewish Hungarian father and his family were deported to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. With her Protestant mother, […]

From Slander’s Brand, Visualizing the Past – Kelly Midori McCormick

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Essays
Authors: Kelly Midori McCormick

[Summer 2024] Visualizing the Past by Kelly Midori McCormick [EXCERPT] The exhibition From Slander’s Brand takes as its starting point the impossibility of representing historical events from a singular, one-to-one relationship with reality. The title, referencing Herodotus, the “father of history” – and, for some, the “father of lies” – asks viewers to question the […]

The Photography Scene, France 2023 – Bruno Chalifour

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Essays
Authors: Bruno Chalifour

[Summer 2024] by Bruno Chalifour [EXCERPT] Post-COVID-19, how is photography faring in France? In the past five years the French government commissioned two surveys of the situation, discussed below. Their conclusions and recommendations attempt to staunch the decline of the profession and define the French cultural exception in this field. Since 2022, the focus has […]

Peter Hujar, Performing After the Fact – Didier Morelli

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Essays
Authors: Didier Morelli | Artists: Peter Hujar

[Winter 2024] Performing After the Fact By Didier Morelli [Excerpt] In the Art Institute of Chicago’s lower level, the Photography and Media galleries are a bit of a vault. The drop ceiling hangs low, and the rooms pale in comparison to the museum’s tall and light-flooded galleries above. While Georges Seurat’s emblematic A Sunday on […]

Wolfgang Tillmans, From Banal to Beautiful – Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Wolfgang Tillmans

[Winter 2024] From Banal to Beautiful By Jill Glessing [Excerpt] To Look Without Fear – the title of the German artist Wolfgang Tillmans’s traveling exhibition presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario1 – is an invitation to look around us, unflinchingly, at the real world that we inhabit, an approach modelled throughout Tillmans’s career and […]

Jocelyne Alloucherie, The Image Set in Motion Between Non-Place and Monument – Christian Roy

Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS | Essays
Authors: Christian Roy | Artists: Jocelyne Alloucherie

[Winter 2024] The Image Set in Motion Between Non-Place and Monument By Christian Roy [Excerpt] Selected to contribute to the design of the Viau station, one of the five that will extend the Montreal metro’s blue line, Jocelyne Alloucherie developed a proposal around images of clouds. She recently offered an overview of it, for which […]

Edward Hillel, Framing the Sequel — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Edward Hillel

[Fall 2023] Framing the Sequel Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] I would love to go to the Main for a smoked meat right now, but it’s closed. I mean: the Main Deli has just closed. It was the one right across the street from Schwartz’s. It served the same kind of sandwiches that are too fat to […]

The Lives of Documents – Photography as Project — Edward Pérez-González

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Essays
Authors: Edward Pérez-González

[Fall 2023] Capturing the Image, Grasping What’s Human Edward Pérez-González [Excerpt] The idea that documentary photography is a neutral means of capturing reality has been utterly debunked. Photographs are not, and never were, simple recordings of reality, which is always complex and subjective. They are imbued with the preconceived ideas – values, feelings, social construction […]

Décadrage colonial, Decentring the Gaze — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Essays
Authors: Claudia Polledri

[Fall 2023] Décadrage colonial Decentring the Gaze [Excerpt] Based on a rereading of French photographic production in the 1930s, the exhibition Décadrage colonial1 underlines the contradictions of an era fascinated by cultures from “elsewhere” and concerned with redefining the image of a nation. Décadrage: leaving the frame, shifting the image, decentring the subject and, thus, […]

Fiona Tan, Travel Stories – Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Essays
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Fiona Tan

[Summer 2023] Fiona Tan, Travel Stories By Ariane Noël de Tilly [Excerpt] Travel and the human relationship with time, nature, and history are among the themes that Fiona Tan most often addresses in her work. Born in Pekanbaru, Indonesia, Tan grew up in Australia and then moved to Amsterdam, where she studied at the Gerrit […]

Phyllis Lambert, A Way of Life – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Phyllis Lambert

[Summer 2023] Phyllis Lambert, A Way of Life By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] Photography is inextricable from Phyllis Lambert’s career. Architectural surveys, studies of urban space, activism, advertising, project documentation, archives, media relations, and exhibition catalogues are based on this tool, which is as essential to modern life as con- crete. Nevertheless, it is only in […]

Photography and Ukraine, Keeping Eyes Open to the War – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis

[Summer 2023] Photography and Ukraine, Keeping Eyes Open to the War By Érika Nimis [Excerpt] Since February 24, 2022, when Russia instigated its full-scale military assault on Ukraine, there has been a constant ow of images of the conflict, both via traditional media outlets and on social networks. This is perhaps the first war to […]

Daniel Hausmann, Backstage among the Urban Ruins — Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Essays
Authors: Mona Hakim

[Winter 2023] Daniel Hausmann, Backstage among the Urban Ruins By Mona Hakim [Excerpt] I first encountered the work of the photographer Daniel Hausmann several years ago, during a visit to his studio, which had been opened to a group of guests. His urban images were unique – at once baroque, dark, and striking. Abandoned lots […]

Michael Snow, The Artist’s Maman Book — Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Essays
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Michael Snow

[Winter 2023] Michael Snow, The Artist’s Maman Book By Jean Gagnon [Excerpt] At age ninety-four, Michael Snow has published My Mother’s Collection of Photographs,1 which he called his “maman book” during its production. As the title does not indicate, the photographs in question were not taken by an artist but are typical family pictures, a […]

John Max, Line Leading through Photography — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: John Max

[Winter 2023] John Max, Line Leading through Photography By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] To sum up an artist’s career apparently takes just a few major works, some biographical references, and several general remarks on how the artist’s work was received, all in chronological order. No need to write a novel. But to achieve such a level […]

Cloud Album — At the Intersection of Science and Art — Karen Henry

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Essays
Authors: Karen Henry

[Fall 2022] By Karen Henry [Excerpt] We humans project a great deal onto clouds, as they oat loftily above or gather and settle in around us. They represent the grandeur and mutability of nature but are also intimate to our everyday experience and the subject of idle contemplation – to have one’s “head in the […]

Disraeli – une expérience humaine en photographie — Pierre Dessureault, A Look Back at the Disraeli Adventure

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

[Fall 2022] A Look Back at the Disraeli Adventure By Pierre Dessureault [Extract] 1972–2022. A half-century has passed since an adventure called Disraeli – une expérience humaine en photographie (Disraeli – A Human Experiment in Photography) took place.1 By no means is it my intention here to commemorate or eulogize this pivotal moment in the […]

Shirin Neshat, Dreams as Acts of Resistance — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 121 – WANDERINGS | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Shirin Neshat

[Fall 2022] Dreams as Acts of Resistance By Jill Glessing [Extract] Displacement, loss, longing – these existential experiences settle in us as we settle around the globe. Contemporary surges of human migration – forced either by conditions of war or poverty or in voluntary search of new opportunities – make these states of dislocation increasingly […]

Michel Saint-Jean. When Documentary Takes a Side— Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

[Summer 2022] By Pierre Dessureault [Excerpt] In the 1960s and 1970s, Quebec was experiencing a radical revision of all kinds of models that had previously been seen as immutable. This major transformation swept away obsolete institutions and fossilized ways of thinking inherited from the Great Darkness of the Duplessis period and laid claim to a […]

Terror Contagion. Surveilling the Surveillance — Edward Pérez-González

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Essays
Authors: Edward Pérez-González

[Summer 2022] By Edward Pérez-González [Excerpt] It was with my head full of the rave reviews I’d read in the local press – “a show that sends shivers down your spine,” “a blood-curdling exhibition” – that I went to the temporary site of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC), in Place Ville Marie, to […]

Prospectus for a Future History of Quebec Photography — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée

[Summer 2022] By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] When we try to reach a better understanding of the history of photography in Quebec, we inevitably stumble into three common areas. The first is absence: so, where is this reference book that everyone’s waiting for and no one has written yet? And yet, there are books on the […]

James Coleman, What Goes Around Comes Around — Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: James Coleman

[Winter 2022] By Stephen Horne “A being racing into the future passes a being racing into the past two footprints perpetually obliterating one another toe to heel, heel to toe.” – W. B. YEATS 1 [Excerpt] James Coleman´s complex cinematic installations disclose the beauty and pleasure of “looking.” The aesthetic experience to which I refer […]

Errance Sans Retour, “They also killed my father” — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Renaud Philippe

[Winter 2022] By Pierre Dessureault [Excerpt] “We are not in front of the images; we are in the middle of them. Like they are in the middle of us. The question is how we circulate among them, how we make them circulate.”1 The life of images, constantly relaunched in various presentation contexts, is core to […]

Et fili ? Cultural Transmission and the Quebec Photobook — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Anne-Marie Proulx, Bertrand Carrière, Charles-Frédérick Ouellet, Donigan Cumming, Florence Le Blanc, Guillaume Simoneau, John Max, Matthieu Brouillard, Michel Campeau, Sylvain Cousineau

[Hiver 2022] By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] It’s a lovely image: my father, who had been taking photographs since the 1960s, had given me his Beseler 23C II enlarger. I went to pick it up in order to flesh out my amateur darkroom, and I was thinking about transmission of culture. The caption might have quoted […]

Luc Bourdon. Playing with Images and Sounds — Nicole Gingras

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Nicole Gingras | Artists: Luc Bourdon

[Fall 2021] An Interview by Nicole Gingras [Excerpt] A major figure in video art and film in Canada, Luc Bourdon has worked with various independent organizations in Quebec, including Vidéographe, Productions Réalisations Indépendantes de Montréal, Cinéma Parallèle, and the Festival du nouveau cinéma de Montréal. Since the 1980s, he has produced some fifty works – […]

David Tomas, Speech and silence — Vincent Bonin

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Vincent Bonin | Artists: David Tomas

[Fall 2021] By Vincent Bonin [Excerpt] Invited by Ciel variable to follow up on the reassessment of works by the artist and anthropologist David Tomas (1950–2019) started in the recent exhibition Moving Through Time and Space,1 Vincent Bonin offers a broader survey of Tomas’s intellectual trajectory and reflects on the presence of silence in some […]