Essays

Hybridity in Action – Florence Le Blanc

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Essays
Authors: Florence Le Blanc

[Summer 2025] Hybridity in Action by Florence Le Blanc [EXCERPT] Although interactions between photography and animation have evolved since the early twentieth century, recent upheavals in the media world (digital era, social networks, artificial intelligence, and so on) are forcing us to revise how we view images and to realize that reciprocity between the two […]

View from the Sidewalk – Stephanie Hornstein

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Essays
Authors: Stéphanie Hornstein | Artists: Bertrand Carrière, Clara Gutsche, Normand Rajotte, William Notman

[Summer 2025] View from the Sidewalk by Stephanie Hornstein [EXCERPT] Few people have meaningfully transformed the way that I perceive the city around me. One was a graffiti artist friend who took me beneath the Ville-Marie overpass and taught me how to decipher the bubble letters and flourishes that form the signatures of Montreal’s most […]

The Age of Plants – Bénédicte Ramade

Ciel variable 129 - FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT | Essays
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade

[Summer 2025] The Age of Plants by Bénédicte Ramade [EXCERPT] With the exhibition Science/Fiction, une non-histoire des Plantes, the Maison européenne de la photographie in Paris bore witness to the turn toward plants that has been shaking up the cultural world for a decade, overturning general preconceptions regarding this realm of the living world. Inspired […]

Woman, Life, Freedom: Resistance through Images – Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Essays, Focus
Authors: Claudia Polledri

Conceived by two Le Monde journalists, Tu ne meurs pas gives a key role to images in the political resistance being waged by the Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran. Claudia Polledri’s essay describes the context behind the uprising unfolding both in the streets and on social media, and invokes the concept of “citizen journalism” to assess amateur images not by their aesthetic value but by their informational significance.

Michael Torosian, Bound Greatness – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Michael Torosian

On the occasion of the summer 2024 exhibition paying tribute to the publishing work of Toronto-based Michael Torosian, Michel Hardy-Vallée takes a look at some of the books he has devoted to photography. The Lumiere Press titles, which focus on eminent photographers, are deeply rooted, he notes, within a broader print culture, as Torosian placed great importance on aspects such as image reproduction, typography, presswork, and bookbinding.

Marlene Creates, Territory, Memory, Language – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Marlene Creates

In this text dedicated to Marlene Creates, Pierre Dessureault explores forty years of image-making in which territory, memory and language intertwine. The Newfoundland artist, whose early work is rooted in the tradition of land art, has never ceased to draw inspiration from her experiences of nature.

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 […]

Moyra Davey. The Personal Narrative and the Art of Fragmented Anti-dogma Narration — Nicolas Mavrikakis

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Nicolas Mavrikakis | Artists: Moyra Davey

[Fall 2021] By Nicolas Mavrikakis [Excerpt] Is there such a thing as left-wing extremism? In recent few months, various events have highlighted the growing hold on the left of can- cel culture – which should, rather, be called erasure or obliteration culture – a way of doing things associated with dictatorships (on the right and […]

Chih-Chien Wang. A Gift of Images — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Essays
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Chih-Chien Wang

[Summer 2021] Par Sylvain Campeau [Excerpt] Characteristic of Chih-Chien Wang’s art practice is his intertwined use of photography and videography, so it might seem incongruous to approach his work from the angle of the still life. Nevertheless, allusions to this genre constantly arise in his work, although analysts and critics have never thought to make […]

Évariste Desparois. A Disappearance Story — Sébastien Hudon

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Essays
Authors: Sébastien Hudon | Artists: Évariste Desparois

[Summer 2021] By Sébastien Hudon [Excerpt] For an exhibition by artist Guillaume Adjutor-Provost titled Belles eaux,1 I was invited to show and introduce three rare works (facsimiles) from an exceptional grouping that I had just discovered. Acquired at an auction held in France in October 2020, the grouping is composed of gelatin-bromide monotype photomontages on […]

Alessandra Sanguinetti, Alec Soth, Araki Nobuyoshi / Juergen Teller. Correspondence and Adventures in Book Form — Jérôme Delgado

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Essays
Authors: Jérôme Delgado | Artists: Alec Soth, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Araki Nobuyoshi, Juergen Teller

[Summer 2021] Par Jérôme Delgado [Excerpt] From the traditional exchange of letters to dialogue that’s more indirect, correspondence takes various forms, especially when, through words – or simply instead of them – photography is the object of the discussion. With its narrative nature, its poetic range, its multiple paths of reading, an image in itself […]

Gathering Clouds. A History of Photography Through Clouds — Bruno Chalifour

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Essays
Authors: Bruno Chalifour

[Winter 2021] By Bruno Chalifour After months of a world pandemic, being surrounded by clouds may sound like a reprieve: fluffy, light, ethereal, and flying higher than the contemporary political discourse in the United States, clouds may provide temporary solace in our dark, sometimes ignorant, times. The exhibition Gathering Clouds, Photographs from the Nineteenth Century […]

Les Années Musicales : 1920–2020. The Space-Music Dimension Becomes Multiplicity — Edward Pérez-González

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Essays
Authors: Edward Pérez-González

[Winter 2021] Par Edward Pérez-González The Single and the Multiple. Briefly, multiplicity can be defined as a condition that amplifies things and phenomena; a state of abundance, of potentialities, that enables us to perceive and comprehend the world through different and heterogeneous dimensions – from another dimension. This mode of the single and the multiple […]

Ewa Monika Zebrowski, Le livre photographique comme espace de collaboration — Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Ewa Monika Zebrowski

[Winter 2021] By Zoë Tousignant It stands to reason that much thought, time, and energy go into the making of a photobook. Fortunately, the work that it involves is usually shared by several individuals who, each expert in their own field, contribute to creating the end product. These individuals most often include a photographer, a […]

3e Biennale des photographes du monde arabe contemporain. Regards sur le Liban, l’Égypte et le Maroc – Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Essays
Authors: Claudia Polledri

[Summer 2020] By Claudia Polledri The third edition of the Biennial of Contemporary Arab World Photography,1 curated by Gabriel Bauret, was held in Paris in 2019. Inaugurated in 2015 on the joint initiative of the Arab World Institute (AWI) and the Maison européenne de la photographie (MEP), the event is important because it showcases works […]

Zoom Photo Festival Saguenay. Overview on the Tenth Year of the Photojournalism Festival – Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Essays
Authors: Sophie Bertrand

[Summer 2020] By Sophie Bertrand For the last ten years, the Zoom Photo Festival been a mid-autumn feature in Chicoutimi, in Quebec’s Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region. La Pulperie de Chicoutimi, a national historic site and regular partner of the festival, serves as headquarters and hosts most of the exhibitions, with La Zone Portuaire, and other shows are […]

MOMENTA 2019. Listening to Things – Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Essays
Authors: Charles Guilbert

[Summer 2020] By Charles Guilbert For the second edition of Momenta | Biennale de l’image1 (it had fourteen editions under its previous name, Le Mois de la photo), co-curators María Wills Londoño, Audrey Genois, and Maude Johnson chose an evocative and seemingly paradoxical title: The Life of Things. It was a title that might bring […]

Dakar, From the Studio to the Sidewalk — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Babacar Traoré (Doli), Boubacar Touré Mandémory, Bouna Médoune Sèye, Élise Fitte-Duval, Fatou Kandé Senghor, Ibrahima Thiam, KhéraBaba, Mabeye Deme, Malick Welli

[Winter 2020] Par Erika Nimis Dakar, a cosmopolitan capital city and crossroads on the Atlantic coast, open to all creative currents, has grown under the gaze of its photographers. An independent field of professional photography emerged in the 1990s, and the institution of the Mois de la Photo has contributed to legitimizing an increasingly engaged […]

Geneviève Cadieux, Vast Still Tender: Ghost Ranch — Laurie Milner

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Essays
Authors: Laurie Milner | Artists: Geneviève Cadieux

[Winter 2020] Par Laurie Milner Is it the greyness of the April afternoon that makes the Rene Blouin Gallery seem so luminous as I enter Geneviève Cadieux’s exhibition Ghost Ranch?1 I had heard the buzz among artists and colleagues that this was a show to be seen – a virtuoso production by an august Montreal […]

Stephen Gill, Gill and the Birds: A Photographic Code of Ethics — Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Stephen Gill

[Winter 2020] Par Alexis Desgagnés On the threshold of my teenage years, my greatest passion was to observe birds. I spent countless hours, binoculars hung around my neck, prowling slowly, silently, through woods and meadows, looking out for a rare gem! When I was thirteen, a camera, a gift from my stepmother, replaced the binoculars, […]

Martin Bureau. Borders and Walls — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: Martin Bureau

March 7, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — Par Sophie Bertrand. “The number of walls has tripled since the Cold War, and it has kept growing since 2001; it now consists of almost 30,000 km of armed borders.”¹ This observation, made in 2013 by the researchers of the Chaire Raoul-Dandurand en études stratégiques et diplomatiques at the Université du Québec à Montréal, during a conference on issues around walled borders, conveys much more than a malaise inherited from history…

CONTACT 2019. Violence — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Carrie Mae Weems

February 28, 2023 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Jill Glessing. Violence runs through our lives, experienced directly or through media representations. We are subject to its power to varying degrees depending on our geographical location, race, class, gender, and access to high-speed internet. We are well acquainted with the variety of ways that humans inflict harm – whether physical, social, or psychological – upon one another…

About the Face: The Photographs of Dave Heath — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

February 13, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Pierre Dessureault. In a body of work accumulated over more than sixty years, Dave Heath (1931–2016), a Canadian photographer born in the United States, challenged the qualities of the photographic medium and its techniques. He constantly probed, through images, Montaigne’s dictum that “every man carries the entire form of the human condition.”¹…

Luigi Ghirri. Flatness and Its Frame — Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Luigi Ghirri

February 6, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Stephen Horne. The Map and The Territory is a large and intricate exhibition of colour photographs by the late Italian artist Luigi Ghirri at the Jeu de Paume in Paris.¹ No doubt the curator of the exhibition, James Lingwood, adopted this title following up on a note that Ghirri wrote in 1970 in which he explained that “his aim was not to make photographs, but rather charts and maps.”²…

Nathan Lyons, An Exploration of Photography as Visual Language — Bruno Chalifour

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Bruno Chalifour | Artists: Nathan Lyons

April 12, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Bruno Chalifour. Some two years after Nathan Lyons’s death, on August 30, 2016, the George Eastman Museum (GEM) is presenting an overview of the life’s work of one of the central inﬂuencers of American photography in the second half of the twentieth century…

Anthropocene Fatigue: Edward Burtynsky’s Strategy of Collapse — Bénédicte Ramade

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade | Artists: Edward Burtynsky

April 5, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Bénédicte Ramade. From the start it seems taken for granted: Edward Burtynsky’s Anthropocene at the National Gallery of Canada will be technophilic.¹ At every opportunity…

Paris Photo, A Game of Memory — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Daido Moriyama

March 28, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Claudia Polledri. Context. The 22nd edition of the Paris Photo international photography fair took place November 8–11, 2018, in Paris. During the four-day fair, crowds of artists, gallery owners, collectors, publishers, curators, journalists, and photography lovers bustled through the Grand Palais, which had become a labyrinth of images organized by Paris Photo director Florence Bourgeois and artistic director Christoph Wiesner…

Milo Rau, Truth and Justice: The Congo Tribunal — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Milo Rau

22 mars, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Pierre Dessureault. The International Institute of Political Murder was created in 2007 by Swiss director, artist, and ﬁlmmaker Milo Rau. Since then, Rau has produced more than ﬁfty plays, ﬁlms, performances, and video installations on social and political realities, most of them complex and controversial…

Camerart. Art from the Point of View of Photography — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Charles Gagnon

September 7, 2022 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — The exhibition Camerart, produced by Galerie Optica and presented in Montreal from December 16, 1974, to January 14, 1975, was a pivotal event in the photography/art debate in Quebec…

Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie. Traces of the Chaos — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Debi Cornwall

August 31, 2022 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — By Érika Nimis. Every summer since 2010, Les Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie has literally pushed art photography into parks and forests and onto beaches, inviting visitors to a true treasure hunt along the legendary Route 132…

Marisa Portolese, Kinship as a Practice: In the Studio with Notman — Laurie Milner

Ciel variable 111 - THE SPACE OF COLOUR | Essays
Authors: Laurie Milner | Artists: Marisa Portolese

August 3, 2022 [originally published in CV111 in Winter 2019] — By Laurie Milner. Kinship, broadly defined, is a core concept in Montreal artist Marisa Portolese’s photographic practice…

Michel Campeau. Photography, the Photographer, the Collector – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 110 - MIGRATION | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Michel Campeau

February 22, 2022 [originally published in CV110 in Fall 2018 ] — The exhibition Michel Campeau – Life before Digital, a retrospective of Michel Campeau’s approach in the early 1970s, offers a wellrounded view of his ideas on photography, on the figure of the photographer, and on that of the collector who finally took over from the producer of images…

Envisioning Photography as Collaborative – Ellen Tolmie

Ciel variable 110 - MIGRATION | Essays
Authors: Ellen Tolmie

February 16, 2022 [originally published in CV110 in Fall 2018 ] — A recent show at the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) challenges conventional notions of the lone photographer, the roles of subjects, and even the exhibition space. The idea of the photograph made by an individual, the photographer, now also lionized as artist and auteur, has long been embedded in the essential idea of what photography is…

In Pursuit of the Afterlife – James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 110 - MIGRATION | Essays
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Afterlife

February 9, 2022 [originally published in CV110 in Fall 2018 ] — In a remarkable group exhibition at Optica, Raymonde April, one of Canada’s finest living photographers, marshalled the talents of an intrepid group of itinerant fellow travellers – and to radiant effect…

On Foxes, Books, and Publishing – Louis Perreault

Ciel variable 109 - REVISIT | Essays
Authors: Louis Perreault

July 31, 2017 [originally published in CV109 in Spring 2018] — First, there was a fox. A few strollers noticed him, but he evaded a closer look by disappearing into the weeds of a post-industrial lot in Montreal East. I quickly took a liking to the animal and made him a sort of personal totem…

ENTR’ACTE . A Collective Portrait of the Royal Victoria Hospital – James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 109 - REVISIT | Essays
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Angela Grauerholz, Chih-Chien Wang, Gabor Szilasi, Luc Courchesne, Marie-Jeanne Musiol, Michel Campeau, Raymonde April, Roberto Pellegrinuzzi, Serge Clément, Yan Giguère, Yann Pocreau

Octobre 19, 2021 [originally published in CV109 in Summer 2018 ] — This round-robin exhibition featured powerful and evocative images of the original site of the recently abandoned Royal Victoria Hospital. Eleven Montreal artists were invited by the RBC Art and Heritage Centre of the McGill University Health Centre to tour the original site…

After Jonathan Monk , Exhibition Views as Augmented Reality  – Marie J. Jean

Ciel variable 109 - REVISIT | Essays
Authors: Marie-Josée Jean | Artists: Jonathan Monk

Octobre 26, 2021 [originally published in CV109 in Summer 2018 ] — Exhibition views have taken on an increasingly important role since museum specialists began featuring them in exhibitions. Originally placed under glass, following a documentary protocol introduced via museology, this form of documentation has gradually come to be displayed on walls, occasionally ascribed the status of artwork…

The Arab Image Foundation through Akram Zaatari’s Eyes: Or, Variations on the Theme of Photography  – Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 109 - REVISIT | Essays
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Akram Zaatari

November 3, 2021 [originally published in CV109 in Summer 2018 ] — According to Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari, photography is expressed in many ways. This is the message of his exhibition, Against Photography: An Annotated History of the Arab Image Foundation, a kaleidoscopic journey, through stories and images…

Alain Laframboise, Le regard du spectre – Florence Chantoury-Lacombe

Ciel variable 108 - GOING PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Florence Chantoury-Lacombe | Artists: Alain Laframboise

June 8, 2021 [originally published in French only in CV108 in Winter 2018] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Contact 2017, Focus on Canada – Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 108 - GOING PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: 2fik, Johan Hallberg-Campbell, Katherine Knight, Luis Jacob, Margo Pfeiff, Mark Lewis, Michael Snow, Michelle Latimer, Sandra Brewster, Suzy Lake

June 15, 2021 [originally published in French only in CV108 in Winter 2018] —
Promotion for “Canada 150” – marking the inception of the colonial enterprise of the “Dominion of Canada” and its unequal union with Quebec – was tepid, perhaps foretelling the inevitable response: a hundred and fifty years old – really? The land, of course, had been inhabited a little longer than that – about twelve thousand years – by Indigenous peoples…

Photography in Canada, 1960–2000, From Photographic Art to the World of Images – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 108 - GOING PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Angela Grauerholz, David McMillan, Gabor Szilasi, George Hunter, Jeff Wall, Jim Breukelman, Jin-Me Yoon, John Massey, Ken Lum, Lynne Cohen, Nina Raginsky, Robert Burley

June 22, 2021 [originally published in French only in CV108 in Winter 2018] — It seems less and less possible to analyze photography and photographic history without talking about production protocols, dissemination strategies, and contexts for conservation and display in public collections. Andrea Kunard situates her undertaking in regard to this position from the start…

“What Does Momenta Stand For?”. A Look Back at the Biennale de l’image de Montréal, 2017 – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 108 - GOING PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Akram Zaatari, Meryl McMaster, Pascal Grandmaison, Taryn Simon, Yto Barrada, Zanele Muholi

February 21, 2018 [originally published in CV108 in Winter 2018] — In June 2017, Le Mois de la Photo de Montréal metamorphosed to the Biennale de l’image, taking on the name MOMENTA, plural of momentum, which means “impetus, energy, force, thrust, drive, impulse”¹ and often denotes a favourable or propitious situation. Would the update to this international event devoted to the contemporary fixed and moving image be successful and yet provide continuity with the old formula?…

NFB, Still Photography Division Service – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

December 8, 2020 [originally published in CV107 in Fall 2017] — The NFB’s Still Photography Division was created in 1941, as a Canadian government information agency under the direction of John Grierson. By 1985, when the small unit’s production, now a collection of photographs, became the core of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Division had produced some 250,000 images.

Katia Kameli, Délio Jasse, Vasco Araújo, Photographs Back from the Void… – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Délio Jasse, Katia Kameli, Vasco Araújo

December 15, 2020 [originally published in CV107 in Fall 2017] — Three solo exhibitions (Katia Kameli, Délio Jasse, and Vasco Araújo) organized in London late in 2016 featured episodes from African and European history, particularly during the colonial period, in which the artists used “traces,” mainly photographic corpuses dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, updated via different media and devices.

Emanuel Licha, The Work of Seeing – Guillaume Lafleur

Ciel variable 107 - RUINS | Essays
Authors: Guillaume Lafleur | Artists: Emanuel Licha

December 22, 2020 [originally published in CV107 in Fall 2017] — Hotel Machine is a feature-length film in the current meaning of the term. It is Licha’s first production of this type, as he comes from the contemporary-art world and his work has usually been presented in galleries. It is related to the trend in documentary cinema that involves taking solid formal points of view – a trend that has been validated by following the traditional levers of funding.

Elles Photographes, The Spirit of Photography – Colette Tougas

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Essays
Authors: Colette Tougas | Artists: Angela Grauerholz

June 30, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — From July 19, 2016, to February 19, 2017, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts mounted an exhibition titled She Photographs, described in the press release as a “feminine echo” of the Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective at the museum in autumn 2016. More than simply an echo, this presentation of works by thirty female photographers, most of them Canadian, painted a strong and true portrait…

Josef Sudek, The World at My Window – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Josef Sudek

August 18, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — In the early 1920s, when Josef Sudek was becoming established as a photographer, Prague had emerged as a point of convergence for avant-garde movements from France, Germany, and Russia. After the dismantlement of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following the Great War, members of these movements were interested in rethinking art – both how it was practised and its relationship with life…

Uprisings, Images Unleashed: An Archive of Resistance – Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 106 - TREES, ICE, AND CLOUDS | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing

August 25, 2020 [originally published in CV106 in Spring 2017] — Resistance to oppression takes many forms. Antonio Gramsci, incarcerated during Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship, struggled to understand the workings of power. Developing his concept of hegemony, published later in Prison Notebooks, Gramsci proposed that power is always in flux and unstable, hence always vulnerable to popular contestation…

ARTGEIST II – FREE FIGURES

Essays

Artworks created as part of the fund-raising campaign ARTGEIST II – FREE FIGURES (2015-2016) Ciel variable presents the artworks created and acquired during its second fund-raising campaign, conducted in 2015–16. In the same spirit as Sitegeist, the 2012–13 campaign, Artgeist proposed that collectors support the magazine by acquiring an original work created specifically for them. […]

ARTGEIST II – FREE FIGURES

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Essays
Artists: Angela Grauerholz, Benoit Aquin, Éliane Excoffier, Marisa Portolese, Pascal Grandmaison

[Winter 2017] Artworks created as part of the find-raising campaign (2015-2016) Ciel variable presents the artworks created and acquired during its second fund-raising campaign, conducted in 2015–16. In the same spirit as Sitegeist, the 2012–13 campaign, Artgeist proposed that collectors support the magazine by acquiring an original work created specifically for them. This project also […]

Ensemble, United Images – Guy Sioui Durand

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Essays
Authors: Guy Sioui Durand

April 28, 2020 [originally published in CV105 in Winter 2017] — Two forms of orality opened and then closed the exhibition Ensemble at VU in Quebec City in October 2016. At the opening, an Indigenous talking circle, led by Nadia Myre, was performed in the large gallery called Espace américain. At the end of the exhibition was a roundtable in the centre of the same gallery, moderated by curator Anne-Marie Proulx…

Jessica Eaton, Colour Is a Verb – James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Essays
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Jessica Eaton

April 30, 2020 [originally published in CV105 in Winter 2017] — Jessica Eaton, a fast-rising star in the photographic world, has for some time now explored the notion of “colour is a verb” with rare verve, intensity, and thematic abandon. In her recent dovetailing series of works shown at Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran in Montreal as part of an exhibition aptly titled Transmutations, Eaton, already celebrated as a doyenne of colour theory…

Canadian Photography Magazines, 1970–1990. Reconsidering a History of Photography in Print – Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 105 – MONTREALITIES | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant

May 5, 2020 [originally published in CV105 in Winter 2017] — The essay reprinted here was written for an exhibition curated by Zoë Tousignant and presented at Artexte. The exhibition was developed as part of Tousignant’s long-term research project, which examines histories and relationships between photography and the printed document in Canada…

Carl Trahan (C Joseph Wilfrid T), The Ethics of Assemblage – Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 104 - FROM ANOTHER ANGLE | Essays
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Carl Trahan

February 24, 2020 [originally published in CV104 in Fall 2016] — The arts were turned upside down by the advent of the internet and social media, and photography perhaps more than any other art. The uninterrupted flow of images on the Web creates both anxiety and saturation…

Robert Bean , Notes on Études (for Marconi) – Robert Evans

Ciel variable 104 - FROM ANOTHER ANGLE | Essays
Authors: Robert Evans | Artists: Robert Bean

February 26, 2020 [originally published in CV104 in Fall 2016] — Robert Bean’s photographs in the series Études (for Marconi), though seemingly straightforward in content, continue the artist’s investigations of obsolescence, its myriad relationships with and the surprisingly malleable notions of past, present, and future, and their outcomes…

Bénédicte Ramade, The Edge of the Earth, Climate Change in Photography and Video – An interview by Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 104 - FROM ANOTHER ANGLE | Essays, Interviews
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade, Jacques Doyon

March 3, 2020 [originally published in CV104 in Fall 2016] — The Edge of the Earth focuses on contributions by various artists and journalists to the recognition and consideration of issues linked to climate change, with a particular emphasis on the challenges posed by recognition of the central role played by humans in the disruption of their environment in what is now known as the Anthropocene Era.

Vox Populi 1985-1989, The origins of VOX, Ciel variable, and Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal – Marcel Blouin

Ciel variable 103 - NATURE | Essays
Authors: Marcel Blouin

December 11, 2019 [originally published in CV103 in Spring 2016] — It was Lucie Bureau who thought up the organization’s name. She was working at Radio Centre-Ville, a multilingual community radio station broadcasting from St. Lawrence Boulevard in Montreal. The name came to mind because she was producing “vox populi” pieces about social and cultural issues…

Bamako, A Biennale that Took the Time to Witness – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 103 - NATURE | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Coco Fusco, Em’kal Eyongakpa, George Mahashe, Georges Senga, Héla Ammar, J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Lebohang Kganye, Lola Khalfa, Moussa Kalapo, Seydou Camara, Sihem Salhi, Uche Okpa-Iroha, Youssef Lahrichi

December 16, 2019 [originally published in CV103 in Spring 2016] — The biennale in Bamako, Mali, came to an end on December 31, 2015. This anniversary edition – the tenth – had been delayed by two years due to a major crisis that occurred in 2012. Even a few weeks before the opening, there was still a climate of uncertainty, though it was quickly swept away by the invigorating enthusiasm of the organizing committee.

Ishiuchi Miyako, Stills of the Wounded: A North American Emergence – Claude Baillargeon

Ciel variable 103 - NATURE | Essays
Authors: Claude Baillargeon | Artists: Ishiuchi Miyako

December 18, 2019 [originally published in CV103 in Spring 2016] — Active since 1975 as a fiercely independent photographer in her native Japan, Ishiuchi Miyako has at last achieved significant recognition on the North American art scene…

PHotoEspaña 2015, Madrid.  Open Veins – Views from Latin America – Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 102 - FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Ana Casas Broda, Janek Zamoyski, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Luis Arturo Aguirre, Luis González Palma, Martín Chambi, Ray Govea, Rodrigo Moya, Tina Modotti

October 9, 2019 [originally published in CV102 in Winter 2016] — You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal 2015, What Has Become of Photography in the Era of Mobile Technologies and Social Networks?  – Élène Tremblay

Ciel variable 102 - FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE | Essays
Authors: Élène Tremblay

October 15, 2019 [originally published in CV102 in Winter 2016] — Curator Joan Fontcuberta’s idea of bringing together artists who explore the post-photographic condition for Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal is especially pertinent in an era in which digital technology has challenged the status of the photographic image…

Lagos, Nigeria: Capital of Photography – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 102 - FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis

October 16, 2019 [originally published in CV102 in Winter 2016] — Lagos – Eko in the Yoruba language – is a typical megalopolis. With its some twenty million inhabitants, it is the economic and cultural heart and soul of Nigeria, which is the birthplace of Wole Soyinka (Nobel Prize for literature) and Fela Kuti (the father of Afrobeat) and the home of Nollywood (the third-largest movie industry in the world)….

Reactions to the Article on the Exhibition The Rebel Yells…

Essays

January 20, 2016 — We received two long letters to the editor, by Hannah Claus and by Lori Beavis, written in reaction to Bénédicte Ramade’s essay on the exhibition The Rebel Yells: Dress and Political Re-dress in Contemporary Indigenous Art, published in issue 101 of the magazine (autumn 2015).

Letter to the Editor – Lori Beavis

Essays

October 27, 2015 Dear Editor, Re: L’habit fait-il le moine/ Do the clothes make the man? Thank you for setting up a situation through the September 2015 review of The Rebel Yells: Dress and Political Re-dress in Contemporary Indigenous Art/ Le cri rebelle: habillement et redressement politique dans l’art autochtone actuel to continue the conversation […]

To the Editor of Ciel variable – Hannah Claus

Essays

October 16, 2015 To the Editor of Ciel variable: While I was at first excited to read the review of Rebel Yells: Dress and Political Re-dress in Contemporary Indigenous Art, curated by Rhonda L. Meier and Lori Beavis at the FOFA Gallery, I was soon disappointed with the article and with Ciel Variable’s editorial staff […]

Reading Ciel variable: The Magazine as Site of Photographic History – Zoë Tousignant

Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant

November 26, 2015 — I have been reading Ciel variable since 1996. A while ago, its editor-in-chief, Jacques Doyon, asked me to write an essay, destined for the Archives section of the magazine’s website, that would demonstrate “the importance of the magazine as a medium and space of exploration for photography.” And so, over the past few weeks, I have been re-reading…

Douala under an Open Sky – Erika Nimis

Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Alessandro Aceri, Boris Nzebo, Christian Hanussek, Em’kal Eyongakpa, Ginette Daleu, Hervé Yamguen, Hervé Youmbi, Nicolas Eyidi, Patrick Wokmeni

July 31, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — Douala. Late January 2015. I take my first steps on the streets of this port city, the economic capital of Cameroon. Douala is a vibrant city that constantly eludes your grasp. First steps and already some reference points. We cannot speak of the contemporary scene in Douala without speaking of the art centres that form its identity.

Do the Clothes Make the Man? – Bénédicte Ramade

Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Essays
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade | Artists: Dana Claxton, Dayna Danger, Lori Blondeau, Meryl McMaster, Rosalie Favell, Shelley Niro, Skawennati, Terrance Houle

Dress codes categorize their users, signal their belonging to a social group: clothes worn in subcultures, from mods to punks,1 for example, act as symbols and incentives to resist normalcy and bourgeois society – considered, of course, to be coercive. In Indigenous cultures, artists have also appropriated clothes to resist the confinement of their representation […]

Beam me up, Scotty! The Photographs Teleported from Google Street View – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 101 - STRATA | Essays
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Doug Rickard, Jon Rafman, Michael Wolf, Mishka Henner

August 5, 2019 [originally published in CV101 in Fall 2015] — It has been a few years now since artists discovered that they could put Google Street View to artistic and critical use. The best-known case is no doubt Jon Rafman, who is pursuing – inexorably, I might be tempted to say – his 9-eyes project, for which he shamelessly pillages the Internet image bank that contains pictures taken by directional cameras affixed to Google Street View (GSV) cars…

Michael Snow’s Bent: Image distortion in 1956 – Robert Fones

Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Essays
Authors: Robert Fones | Artists: Michael Snow

May 8, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — As a child, I learned from a book on cartooning that my mother bought me that a cartoon character’s body could be distorted or exaggerated to express astonishment or alarm. I vividly recall an illustration in the book of a character with eyes popped out, jaw dropped to the navel, and the whole body stretched vertically…

“Photo Season” at the MNBAQ: What Photography for the Museum? – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Bryan Adams, Geneviève Cadieux, Lida Moser

May 13, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — “The nineteenth-century dispute over the relative artistic merits of painting and photography seems misguided and confused today”. Does Walter Benjamin’s statement, dating from the 1930s, put a final stop to the debate over whether photography naturally belongs in museums?

BNLMTL 2014 : L’avenir (looking forward) – Louis Cummins, Geopolitics and Institutional Strategies

Ciel variable 100 - REPLAY | Essays
Authors: Louis Cummins | Artists: Abbas Akhavan, Emmanuelle Léonard, Étienne Tremblay-Tardif, Hito Steyerl, Jillian Mayer, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Lawrence Weiner, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ursula Biemann

May 15, 2019 [originally published in CV100 in Spring 2015] — By including artists such as Lawrence Weiner and Krzysztof Wodiczko, two pioneers of conceptual art who, in the late 1960s, combined art and social activism, the curators of the Biennale de Montréal 2014 clearly staked out their position…

PHotoEspaña 2014: Shining Light on Spanish Photography – Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Paco Gómez Martínez

March 4, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — “Mother and teacher mine, my sad and spacious Spain”: this is how the poet, Blas de Otero described his country’s vast geography and serial suffering under the double yoke of monarchy and religion, and then under fascism…

Forgotten Photography : The Case of Béla F. Egyedi – Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Béla Egyedi

March 6, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — Béla Ferenc Egyedi was born in 1913 in Esztergom, Hungary. He immigrated to Canada in 1951 and lived for many years in Montreal’s Milton-Park neighbourhood, at various addresses on Lorne Avenue and Durocher Street, near Milton Street. He was simultaneously a photographer, a printmaker, a poet, and a ceramicist…

Valérie Jouve, Five women from the country of the moon – Fabien Pinaroli

Ciel variable 99 - HABITAT | Essays
Authors: Fabien Pinaroli | Artists: Valérie Jouve

March 11, 2019 [originally published in CV99 in Winter 2015] — For more than twenty years, in her encounters and the resulting portraits, Valérie Jouve has been navigating among reference points composed of historical markers such as architecture in peripheral zones, or the habituses of contemporary human beings…

Of Walking. A Photography and Thirdspace Paradigm – Philippe Guillaume

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Essays
Authors: Philippe Guillaume | Artists: Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand, Jim Campbell, Paulien Oltheten, Sohei Nishino

December 18, 2018 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — Karen Irvine, curator and museum associate director at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, recounted that it was after seeing Sohei Nishino’s work in Korea in 2010 and reading Rebecca Solnit that she had the idea for the Of Walking exhibition. Nishino is one of eight international contemporary artists whose works were in the show…

Revisiting History in Fragments: Three Recent Projects by Stan Douglas – Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Essays
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Stan Douglas

January 7, 2019 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — Stan Douglas’s earlier productions include Every Building on 100 West Hastings (2001), a nocturnal panorama of a block of buildings situated in a poor Vancouver neighbourhood, and the series of four photographs Crowds & Riots (2008), depicting reconstructions of crowd scenes and riots that took place in Vancouver during the twentieth century…

Unpacking Serge Clément’s Library – Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 98 – ABSTRACTION | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Serge Clément

January 9, 2019 [originally published in CV98 in Fall 2014] — I travelled to Quebec City to see Serge Clément’s exhibition Constellations on a snowy Sunday afternoon in April. I had little prior knowledge of the show, presented at VU, centre de diffusion et de production de la photographie from March 21 to April 20, 2014, save for its basic idea: to showcase Clément’s collection of photobooks…

Tacita Dean, Out of Time: A Seeing that Touches – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Tacita Dean

October 17, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — This was Winnicott’s response to the difficult challenge of reconciling oneself to one’s own temporality, a favoured problem for artists from On Kawara to Ann Hamilton to Tacita Dean. Artists have tended to handle this challenge in one of two ways: through an art practice that cultivates a relationship with the past or, conversely, by exploring new forms of subjectivity…

The Quebec Photobook, Thoughts on a History to Be Uncovered – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés

October 22, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — I discovered Marcel Cognac by chance – a chance presented to those who know how to wait for it, to those who want to understand something about their culture and their country. When I came across a copy of his book Visages du Québec, published in 1964, with text by Jean-Charles Harvey…

Family of Man | New Topographics, Audacity by Proxy : The Reiteration of Exhibitions – Bénédicte Ramade

Ciel variable 97 - PORTRAIT GALLERY | Essays
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade

October 24, 2018 [originally published in CV97 in Spring 2014] — The two last decades have seen the growth of a complex phenomenon: exhibition reproductions. A reprise produced as the inclusion of a “period room” doesn’t have the same effects as a complete restaging of a famous precedent in twentieth-century art history…

Letter to Paul Wombell, Post-scriptum and Afterthoughts About the Automated Image – Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Michael Snow

June 18, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — I had the pleasure of being invited by Chuck Samuels, the director of Le Mois de la photo à Montréal, to join Paul Wombell, the curator of Le Mois de la photo 2013, at the screening of art video shorts and a presentation of Michael Snow’s La région centrale (1970) at La Cinémathèque québécoise…

SITEGEIST II – L’ESPRIT DES LIEUX

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays

[Hiver 2014] New works created for the first Ciel variable fund-raising campaign following the first section of works published in the issue 94 of the magazine, in May 2013 This campaign is based on the idea of bringing together a collector and a photographer to create an original artwork on the theme “the spirit of […]

Les Rencontres d’Arles – Serge Allaire, Arles in Black

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays
Authors: Serge Allaire

August 8, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — Attending the inaugural week of the Rencontres is always a rather frenetic experience, with almost fifty exhibitions to see, as well as the associated programming and a three-day colloquium, not to mention the daily encounters and debates during which artists, curators, and critics comment on the exhibitions, and the evenings at the Théâtre antique. And then, there are the after-hours activities…

Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal 2013 – Zoë Tousignant, Drone: The Automated Image

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Barbara Probst, David K. Ross, Donovan Wylie, Elina Brotherus, Ilse Bing, Jules Spinatsch, Michel Campeau, Mishka Henner, Trevor Paglen, Véronique Ducharme

August 13, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — The challenge faced by theme-based biennials is to propose a conceptual framework that allows a great number and wide diversity of artworks to be brought together while providing an original viewpoint that positively inflects the reading of the works gathered. Rarely has Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal offered such a cohesive and powerful curatorial statement as in its 13th edition, Drone: The Automated Image…

CONTACT 2013 : FIELD OF VISION – Jill Glessing, Expanding our Field with Contact Festival

Ciel variable 96 – PERFORMING FOR THE IMAGE | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Adam Broomberg, Andrew Wright, Arnaud Maggs, Marie Cosindas, Marlene Creates, Meryl McMaster, Oliver Chanarin, Robert Flaherty, Sebastião Salgado

August 15, 2018 [originally published in CV96 in Winter 2014] — In its fifteenth year, Contact, the world’s largest photography festival, offered an expanded schedule of photography-based adventures that included films, workshops, 174 exhibitions, and a three-day symposium featuring international curators and critics. Following a line-up that included Geoffrey Batchen and Joel Snyder…

Lynne Cohen, False Clues: Space Within Place – Philippe Guillaume

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Philippe Guillaume | Artists: Lynne Cohen

May 9, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — Lynne Cohen’s recent exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal presents much more than a display of captivating and masterful large-size photographs of interior spaces. At first glance, False Clues could be described as an imposing photographic project documenting ordinary interior spaces. However, the titles of the twenty-five chromogenic prints and fifteen gelatin-silver prints selected for the show (like those of most of her photographs) discourage any documentary connotation…

Donald McCullin, Collision, Helen Doyle, Representing War and Social Conflicts? – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Bertrand Carrière, Donald McCullin, Helen Doyle, Michael Mitchell

May 14, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — By a strange coincidence, two exhibitions – a Donald McCullin retrospective and Collision: Conflict and Its Consequences – at the National Gallery of Canada, as well as a film, Dans un océan d’images, featured at the recent International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) in Montreal, have presented a wide range of practices related to how photographs portray war and social conflict…

John Gossage, The Photobook: Reflections on Several Recent Projects – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 95 – CYBER / ESPACE / PUBLIC | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: John Gossage

May 16, 2018 [originally published in CV95 in Fall 2013] — If there is one category that seems to have escaped the crisis in the book-publishing sector engendered by the rise of digital publishing, it is photobooks, which are currently appearing at such a rate that it is legitimate to think they will eventually supplant exhibitions as the main means of dissemination of photography and, especially, photographic creativity…

SITEGEIST – THE SPIRIT OF A PLACE – Ciel variable’s first fund-raising campaign

Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Artists: Alain Paiement, Angela Grauerholz, Chuck Samuels, Gabor Szilasi

[Spring/summer 2013] Works created for the first Ciel variable fund-raising campaign This campaign is based on the idea of bringing together a collector and a photographer to create an original artwork on the theme “the spirit of a place” – a place selected by the collector and interpreted by the artist. The exercise offers a […]

Omer Fast, Continuous Coverage – Blake Fitzpatrick

Ciel variable 94 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Blake Fitzpatrick | Artists: Omer Fast

March 14, 2018 [originally published in CV94 in Spring 2013] — Omer Fast is not a documentarian, but his solo exhibition at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery did draw attention to the strategies of an artist working, as Jeff Wall put it, “near documentary.” Spanning the last decade, the exhibition referenced sites of recent global conflict with three video works that quoted documentary or journalistic convention…

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