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 [Excerpt] 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 […]

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 [Extrait] 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 […]

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 [Excerpt] 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, […]

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 [Excerpt] 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 […]

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 [Excerpt] 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 […]

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 [Excerpt] 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 […]

Martin Bureau. Borders and Walls — Sophie Bertrand

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

[Fall 2019] Par Sophie Bertrand [Excerpt] “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 […]

CONTACT 2019. Violence — Jill Glessing

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

[Fall 2019] By Jill Glessing [Excerpt] 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, […]

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

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

[Fall 2019] By Pierre Dessureault [Excerpt] 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 […]

Luigi Ghirri. Flatness and Its Frame — Stephen Horne

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

[Fall 2019] By Stephen Horne [Excerpt] 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 […]

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

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

[Summer 2019] By Bruno Chalifour [Excerpt] 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:1 a photographer exhibited in the most prestigious museums […]

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

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

[Summer 2019] By Bénédicte Ramade [Excerpt] 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. Even as stratigraphers are still discussing the contours of this geological epoch attributed to human activity, still bitterly arguing over the relevance of the very word […]

Paris Photo, A Game of Memory — Claudia Polledri

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

[Summer 2019] By Claudia Polledri [Excerpt] 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 […]

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

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

[Summer 2019] By Pierre Dessureault “Truth may not be the goal, but it may be the way.”1 [Excerpt] The Congo Tribunal, documentary film by Milo Rau, a German–Swiss co-production (2017), was presented as part of the exhibition L’imaginaire radical: le contrat social at VOX September 13 to December 15, 2018. The International Institute of Political […]

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

[Winter 2019] By Pierre Dessureault [Excerpt] 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. Although a place in the art market had been carved out for photography in the late 1960s, museums were proceeding […]

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

[Winter 2019] By Érika Nimis [Excerpt] 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. During each edition, this photographic and human adventure is punctuated by a number […]

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

[Winter 2019] By Laurie Milner [Excerpt] Kinship, broadly defined, is a core concept in Montreal artist Marisa Portolese’s photographic practice. We see kinship, in the context of family relations, enacted in Antonia’s Garden (2007–11), a series of portraits, still lifes, and landscapes that traces the psychic effects of trauma and the will to heal in […]

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

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

[Fall 2018] By Pierre Dessureault [Excerpt] Photography. The exhibition Michel Campeau – Life before Digital,1 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

[Fall 2018] By Ellen Tolmie [Excerpt] 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 […]

In Pursuit of the Afterlife – James D. Campbell

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

[Fall 2018] By James D. Campbell [Excerpt] In a remarkable group exhibition recently on view at Optica,1 Raymonde April, one of Canada’s finest living photographers, marshalled the talents of an intrepid group of itinerant fellow travellers – and to radiant effect. April formed Outre-vie/Afterlife in 2013. The group comprises thirteen accomplished photographers2 all of whom […]

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…