Essays

Paul Graham : In the Present – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Paul Graham

October 12, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — This spring, the Pace Gallery in New York, a temple to photography since the early 1980s, had a show of recent works by English photographer Paul Graham in one of its locations in the Chelsea neighbourhood. The Present, the works which have also been published in a book by the English publisher MACK, is the third part of a photographic trilogy begun at the turn of the century with American Night (1998–2002), followed by the ambitious series A Shimmer of Possibility (2004–06)…

Taryn Simon, Foiling the Truth: The Effects of the Real and Fictional in Documentary Photography – Mirna Boyadjian

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Essays
Authors: Mirna Boyadjian | Artists: Taryn Simon

October 16, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Howard Becker wrote an essay called “Do Photographs Tell the Truth?” in 1986, and the question still seems pertinent. Although today we admit that the photographic image constitutes a (re)construction of the world and not a reproduction of reality, a certain legalistic conception of photographs tends to be maintained…

Chronicles of a Disappearance : Seeing What Disappears – Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 92 – TRUE NORTH | Essays
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: José Toirac, Omer Fast, Philippe Parreno, Taryn Simon

October 18, 2017 [originally published in French in CV92 in Fall 2012] — Sometimes, thanks to a curator’s insight, a group exhibition be comes a work of art in itself. This is the case for “Chronicles of a Disappearance,” in which John Zeppetelli not only presents five artworks of an extraordinary density but, in bringing them together, weaves networks of meaning that greatly strengthen each artwork.

David Askevold, Disorientation Artist – Robert Evans

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Essays
Authors: Robert Evans | Artists: David Askevold

August 9, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — David Askevold’s work is variously labelled as post-minimal, conceptual, narrative, story art, and post-movement, although none of these is adequate. Westerns, country-and-western music, poltergeists, ghosts, spirits, games, rules, narratives, dreams, history, geography, scientific imaging, and anthropology all inform his work. The list of materials and approaches with which he worked is similarly eclectic…

Springtime of South African Photography – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis

August 14, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — A number of events (exhibitions, publications, and awards) have recently highlighted the growing success of South African photography on the international contemporary scene. Since the abolition of apartheid, and then the election of Nelson Mandela as president of the country in 1994, South Africa has become the spearhead of contemporary African photography, reinforced by a long and rich history that begins with the invention of photography itself, imported to Cape Town in the 1840s.¹…

Nadia Seboussi, Le dernier été de la raison – Pierre Rannou, Looking Back at the Image

Ciel variable 91 – OUR WORLD | Essays
Authors: Pierre Rannou | Artists: Nadia Seboussi

August 16, 2017 [originally published in CV91 in Spring 2012] — When we enter the exhibition space at the UQAM gallery, what we see first are two television screens with headphone sets, and then we see two more screens on the wall to the right. As we continue to look around, we note the large-format photocopies of newspaper front pages on two of the four walls and, standing alone on the left side of the exhibition space, a pedestal on which a book sits…

Le BAL: A New Photographic Institution in France? – Michel Poivert

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: Michel Poivert

April 3, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — We present an analysis of the context and strategic positionings that prevailed at the foundation of bal, a French photography institution with its roots in the field of independent press agencies. Although such a reality does not have its equivalent here, Michel Poivert’s viewpoints on the emergence of institutions, the recognition of documentary photography, and the issues in visual media education provide an interesting perspective on the initiatives taken by, and shortcomings of our institutions with regard to photographic issues.

Lucidity. Inward Views. Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal – René Viau

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: René Viau

May 17, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — Bringing together twenty-six artists under the title Lucidity. Inward Views, the twelfth edition of Le Mois de la photo à Montréal made the theme that served as its title, if not a template for comprehension, the pivot of its articulations. Through the works in this dense, enriching event, a strongly subjective vision was proposed to viewers. For the artists, “interrogating the world goes hand in hand with interrogating oneself (and vice versa),” according to event curator Anne-Marie Ninacs.¹

La Biennale di Venezia 2011 – Alice Ming Wai Jim

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: Alice Ming Wai Jim

May 22, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — “Navinland needs YOU,” according to the s.w.a.g. (souvenirs, wearables, and gifts) cum recruitment material of Thai artist of Indian descent Navin Rawanchaikul’s latest staging of his fledgling non-nation. Set up in a bar and restaurant at the entrance to the Giardini, where the permanent national pavilions of the Venice Biennale have been since 1885, Paradiso di Navin: A Mission to Establish Navinland is a parody as astute as it is amusing of the year’s theme of ILLUMInations.

Serge Emmanuel Jongué, Capturing and Narrating the Unspeakable – Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 90 – COLLABORATIONS | Essays
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Serge Emmanuel Jongué

May 24, 2017 [originally published in CV90 in Winter 2012] — The name Serge Emmanuel Jongué (who died in 2006) was not unknown in the photographic community. In his important essay titled “The New Photographic Order,” published in 1990,¹ Jongué cast a lucid eye on the issues in Quebec documentary photography in the 1970s. His reinterpretation of the official discourse attached to this photographic school has become a classic for those interested in the history and comprehension of Quebec photographic practices.

Hervé Guibert, The Image of Words – Franck Michel

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Essays
Authors: Franck Michel | Artists: Hervé Guibert

March 7, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — From 9 February to 10 April 2011, the Maison européenne de la photographie in Paris presented the first-ever retrospective of the works of photographer and writer Hervé Guibert, comprising some 230 images.¹ I had a chance to visit the exhibition on a weekday morning when the museum opened, so I was just about alone in the galleries (something rare at this museum).

John Max: The Vertigo of the Free Gaze – Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Essays
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: John Max, Michel Lamothe

March 9, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — In John Max, a portrait, Michel Lamothe proves that an attentive gaze trained on the other may be transmuted into a deep meditation. To create this work, which is as fluid as a fiction film, Lamothe followed the photographer John Max for three years (from 2000 to 2003), accumulating 40 hours of footage – film that he spent months pruning and then editing, in collaboration with Louise Dugal…

Leaping Forward: The Montreal Museum of Fine Art’s New Photographic Collecting Practices – Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Alain Chagnon, Brian Merrett, Gabor Szilasi, John Max, Normand Rajotte, Roger Charbonneau

March 14, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — The acquisitions of Quebec photography from the 1960s to the 1980s are thus part of the institution’s current recognition of – and seemingly unquenchable gusto for – photographic imagery of all kinds, and these acquisitions have added considerably to the growing photography collection, which now totals over 1,500 works.

Making Light: The Emergence of Modernist Photography in Quebec Revealed – Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 89 - PLACES | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Albert Dumouchel, Conrad Tremblay, Gordon Webber, Guy Borremans, Jauran, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Jean-Pierre Beaudin, Omer Parent, Rodolphe de Repentigny

March 16, 2017 [originally published in CV89 in Fall 2011] — There are still many gaps in our knowledge of the history of Quebec photography. I realized this after seeing “Photographes rebelles à l’époque de la Grande Noirceur (1937-1961),” which was held at Maison Hamel-Bruneau in Quebec City. Devoted to photography during the Duplessis era, the exhibition comprised about eighty works…

Bernd & Hilla Becher: Reading Between the Grids – Philippe Guillaume

Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Essays
Authors: Philippe Guillaume | Artists: Bernd & Hilla Becher

December 13, 2016 [originally published in CV88, Spring 2011] — When we think of the work of Bernhard and Hilla Becher, a classical eighteenth-century mansion, pristine gardens where Madame de Staël walked, and a spectacular landscape overlooking a lake with the Alps as backdrop is hardly the scene that comes to mind. Strikingly different from the industrial landscapes that captivated the photographers during the second half of the twentieth century, this locale, the Musée de l’Elysée, is the setting for the latest exhibition of their work.

Doina Popescu. Envisioning the Ryerson Gallery and Research Centre – Claude Baillargeon

Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Essays
Authors: Claude Baillargeon

December 15, 2016 [originally published in CV88, Spring 2011] — For the last few years, the campus of Ryerson University in downtown Toronto has been abuzz with the redesign and expansion of the School of Image Arts to accommodate the emerging Ryerson Gallery and Research Centre. Slated to open in fall 2012, this major facility is intended to become an international centre dedicated to photography and related media. To learn more about this ambitious project and the evolving vision guiding it, Ciel variable met with Doina Popescu, who is overseeing the endeavour as its initial director.

Pierre Gaudard, Documentary Photographer – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Pierre Gaudard

December 20, 2016 [originally published in CV88, Spring 2011] — Pierre Gaudard is one of the rare photographers whose photographs are not on the Web. Absent from the photography scene since the mid-1980s because he returned to France and because of the gradual disappearance of the documentary genre from institutions devoted to photography, his name was suddenly resurrected in a press release announcing his death…

Performance Images, Image Performances – Anne Bénichou

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Anne Bénichou

August 1, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — In 2004, at Dazibao, “Performance et photographie: Point and Shoot” explored the close connections between performance and photography. In this exhibition, performance images were envisaged beyond their documentary function, as works in their own right. In 2007, the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery at Concordia University presented “9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theatre, and Engineering, 1966,” an exhibition devoted to the eponymous evening of experimental performances held in New York in 1966…

Re-creating Danse dans la neige – Mario Côté

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Mario Côté | Artists: Françoise Sullivan

August 3, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — In October 2005, my chance meeting with the multidisciplinary artist Françoise Sullivan at the café of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels led to the idea of reviving, almost sixty years later, an early masterpiece of modern dance: Danse dans la neige.

Rearticuling Performance on SecondLife – Cyril Thomas

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Cyril Thomas | Artists: Eva et Franco Mattes, Joseph DeLappe, Lynn Hershman Leeson

August 8, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — It is obvious – given the statements and actions of the SecondLife Liberation Army, the 3D reconfiguration of the Guantanamo prison filmed by Nonny de la Peña, Liberate Your Avatar by Paul Sermon, works by Agnès de Cayeux, and the productions of Nicolas Boone – that SecondLife, created by LindenLabs, is a territory and space that is widely used by artists, filmmakers, playwrights, and musicians…

Archives of Inspiration – Barbara Clausen

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Barbara Clausen | Artists: Daniel Guzman, Kelly Walker, Luis Felipe Ortega, Seth Price

August 10, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — A man walks into frame and presses his body into a corner. The camera zooms in on him as he forces his entire body into the confines of the triangular space that he has created. He shifts his hips and squeezes his arms and hands into the small space left between his body and the corner. His movements are slight, yet strenuous; there is a sexual, yet suppressed, almost violent tension in his striving to be absorbed by the architecture.

Animating the Document, Performing the Spectator: Tim Clark, Reading the Limits, 2008. – David Tomas

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: David Tomas | Artists: Tim Clark

August 15, 2016 [originally published in Fall 2010] — Tim Clark. Reading the Limits” was produced by the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery at Concordia University. On one level, the exhibition was a retrospective devoted to Tim Clark, a Montreal-based performance artist who produced a series of important works between 1977 and 2003. On another level, it was designed to reopen the question of the contemporary status of the artist and the interstitial – post-1970s/contemporary academic – function of the artwork…

Guest editor : Anne Bénichou

Ciel variable 86 - PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Anne Bénichou

[Fall 2010] documents [de] PERFORMANCE Historic performances are currently being updated in different forms: exhibitions, appropriations, remediations, and re-enactments. These practices raise a number of questions about the status of performance documentation (photos, videos, and films in particular) and how it is interpreted, adressed here through multiple recent examples. DAVID TOMAS Tim Clark. Reading the […]

Stan Douglas, Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 – Karen Henry

Ciel variable 85 - CONFLICT | Essays, Portfolios
Authors: Karen Henry | Artists: Stan Douglas

May 16, 2016 [originally published in Summer 2010] — The impressive piece of public art addresses the very nature of public space. It is named after the two streets that cross at the north corner of the Woodward’s building, on which the artwork is installed. The image inhabits space like a sculpture, grandly overlooking the public and private courtyards of the new complex in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Some views, some perspectives – Suzanne Paquet

Essays
Authors: Suzanne Paquet | Artists: Fred Herzog, Greg Girard, Isabelle Hayeur, Jessica Auer

October 22, 2015 [originally published on May 31, 2010] — “Landscape” photography – that which depicts the territory, the environment, places – is no doubt one of the most widely practised photographic genres, by various categories of picture takers: topographers, explorers, artists, tourists, and amateur photographers.

Fred Herzog, Greg Girard, Isabelle Hayeur, Jessica Auer

Andreas Gursky : Werke/Works 80-08 – John K. Grande

Ciel variable 84 – INHABITED | Essays
Authors: John K. Grande | Artists: Andreas Gursky

[Spring 2010] by John K. Grande Andréas Gursky’s incredible take on the contemporary has much to do with the ascent of photography in the contemporary art world. And yet Gursky, as much as any photographier, is to be credited for raising that profile, thanks to his monumental photographic images. It is therefore ironic that for […]

Form: Experimentation and Transformation – Sylvain Campeau

Essays
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Alain Paiement, Bertrand Carrière, Bill Vazan, Isabelle Hayeur, Luc Courchesne, Nicolas Baier, Raymonde April

October 15, 2015 [originally published on March 31, 2010] — Looking back over twenty years and trying to retrace the path of experiments with images, we start in the early 1990s, when a couple of newcomers, Alain Paiement and Roberto Pellegrinuzzi, were already starting to turn heads. In an essay published in 1992, Denis Lessard tried to show what these artists owed to the heritage of Pierre Boogaerts, Bill Vazan, and Serge Tousignant.¹ He also mentioned the work, then new, of Raymonde April, Lucie Lefebvre, and Denis Farley. This effort at historical perspective was out of place at the time, when the lion’s share of attention in the critical environment was being paid to the rebirth of installation art and the manner in which photography and, soon, the photographic would be inserted into it.

Alain Paiement, Bertrand Carrière, Bill Vazan, Isabelle Hayeur, Luc Courchesne, Nicolas Baier, Raymonde April

Haunting Images: On Joachim Koester’s Photographic Works – Maxime Coulombe

Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Essays
Authors: Maxime Coulombe | Artists: Joachim Koester

[Fall 2009] Joachim Koester photographs, and sometimes films, invisible events. Since the mid-1990s, he has sought out places that history seems to have touched, then deserted, and finally left to fade away. He sees himself as an archaeologist of the intangible, and thus he asks a question both beautiful and disturbing: Once an event is […]

Magazines and the Making of Photographic Modernism in Canada – Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 83 - MEDIUM : MAGAZINES | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant

[Fall 2009] What images does the expression “photographic modernism in Canada” call to mind? If you are conversant with early-twentieth-century Canadian photography, the pictures of John Vanderpant, the Dutch-born Vancouver-based photographer who was the subject of an exhibition presented at the National Gallery of Canada in 1976, will likely be conjured. The photographic production of […]

In Defense of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography – Martha Langford

Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Martha Langford

[Summer 2009] The National Gallery of Canada (NGC), under the direction of Marc Mayer, has recently announced that the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP) will no longer occupy its building at 1 Rideau Canal. In fact, the building will no longer be a public space for the arts. It has been handed over to […]

Photography: Too Fragile for the Public Patrimony? – Stéphane Bouchard

Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Stéphane Bouchard

[Summer 2009] by Stéphane Bouchard Of all the creative support programs, Quebec’s policy for the integration of the arts with architecture and the environment (commonly known as the 1 percent program) offers some of the best visibility, as well as terrific financial support, to artists. This program allots unequalled sums to bring contemporary art into […]

Negotiating the Collection in the Street : Reading the McCord Museum’s Outdoor Interventions – Johanna Mizgala

Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Johanna Mizgala | Artists: Brian Merrett, David Miller, Laurie Kang, Louise Abbott, Nicholas Hoban, Notman & Sandham, William Notman, William Notman & Son, Zoe Yuristy

[Summer 2009] Relevance is a word that permeates discussions about the role of museums within the social fabric of community. As repositories, museums have a primary function of cultivation not only of objects but also of a public to engage with them. Museums amass, describe, preserve, and, ultimately, display facets of their contents, arranged and […]

At Play in the Frame – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Ken Lum, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Rebecca Belmore

[Summer 2009] In Montreal, as in many cities around the world, works of art have often been placed in “public” urban spaces. In some cases, the placement of works is accomplished through channels of bureaucratic control or corporate interest, while in other cases artists have thought of their actions as interventions in those spheres, even […]

The City: Always Already Photographic . . . – Suzanne Paquet

Ciel variable 82 – PUBLIC ART | Essays
Authors: Suzanne Paquet | Artists: Jean-François Cantin, Ken Lum, Michel Lemieux, Nicolas Baier, Thomas Kneubühler, Victor Pilon

[Summer 2009] The world identifies with the quintessence of photographs. This identification does not occur for no reason. For the world itself is composed of a photographic face. . . . the world has become the photographic present, and the photographic present is fully perpetuated. ⎯ Siegfried Kracauer, 19271 Although photographs are generally flat, they […]

The Private Photo Albums of Hugh Le Caine – Alexandre Robertson

Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Essays
Authors: Alexandre Robertson | Artists: Hughes Le Caine

[Spring 2009] “… a change in time is enough to re-create the world and ourselves.” — Marcel ProustDespite his pioneering role in the development of musique concrète, Hugh Le Caine (1914–77), a well-known physicist, inventor of electronic musical instruments, and self-taught composer, remains a relatively obscure figure: information about him is limited almost exclusively to […]

Remains and Disappearances The Work of Oscar Muñoz – Elizabeth Matheson

Ciel variable 81 - MADE IN CHINA | Essays
Authors: Elizabeth Matheson | Artists: Oscar Muñoz

[Spring 2009] We live in an age of disappearances, a time of loss and change, with mass extinctions and vanishing eco-regions. These profound, sinister planetary transformations remind us of the intimate link between ourselves and our actions in the visible world. Yet it seems as if this rapid unravelling has left us dumb with dread and […]

39e Rencontres d’Arles, Christian Lacroix et ses invités : un regard anthropologique sur la photographie de mode – Serge Allaire

Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Essays
Authors: Serge Allaire

[Fall 2008] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

The weight of photographic history: THE YVES BEAUREGARD COLLECTION – Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Yves Beauregard

[Fall 2008] by Zoë Tousignant From September 25, 2008, to January 4, 2009, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) is presenting Quebec City and its Photographers, 1850–1908: The Yves Beauregard Collection, the first extensive exhibition of early Quebec photography to be organized by the museum in over twenty years. Quebec City and its […]

From Image Bank to Morris/Trasov Archive – Vincent Bonin

Ciel variable 80 - IMAGE BANKS | Essays
Authors: Vincent Bonin | Artists: General Idea, Marcel Duchamp, Pedro Friedeberg, Robert Filliou, Vincent Trasov

[Fall 2008] by Vincent Bonin In 1967, Jack Chambers of London, Ontario, received a letter from the National Gallery of Canada informing him that its staff was beginning to assemble a bank of two thousand slides on Canadian art and asking for his permission to reproduce the image of one of his works. He was […]

Preservation of Artworks in the Era of Obsolescence – Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Essays
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Gary Hill, Jim Campbell, Nam June Paik

[Summer 2008] by Jean Gagnon My father, like many in his generation,1 was a big fan of family photographs. Anything and everything was an excuse to take “slides,” as he called them. We were living in Quebec City, and, aside from the pictures taken at Christmas and on summer trips to Maine, he amassed good documentation […]

Photographic Projects for the Web, Digital Photo Albums – Sylvie Parent

Ciel variable 79 - COLOURS OF THE CITY | Essays
Authors: Sylvie Parent | Artists: Beat Brogle, Ethan Ham, Marika Dermineur, Philippe Zimmermann, Reynald Drouhin, Stéphane Degoutin, Timothé Rolin

[Summer 2008] by Sylvie Parent Thanks to the growing popularity of digital cameras, with their direct connectivity to computers, the number of images sent by e-mail and of photographs published on the network has been growing exponentially. The rapid appropriation of these technologies by the public has given rise to increasingly widespread activities such as […]

Twenty Years of Ciel variable – Part Two – Jacques Doyon

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

[Spring 2008] To complement the first part of our look back at the first twenty years of the magazine, published in our last issue, we want here to emphasize two relatively obscure aspects of our history. The first one is the contribution of photographers to the very first version of the magazine, when its mandate […]

Montreal Collects, Contemporary Photography: The LaRochelle and Taillefer collections – James Campbell

Ciel variable 78 - COLLECTING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Carlos & Jason Sanchez, Edward Burtynsky, Geoffrey James, Janita Eyre, Loretta Lux, Louis Joncas, Marion Landry, Matthieu Brouillard, Mitch Epstein, Nan Goldin, Pablo Ferrer, Pablo Zutela Zahr, Pascal Grandmaison, Richard Misrach, Roberto Pellegrinuzzi, Rodney Graham, Sarah Morris, Scott McFarland, Stephanie Schneider, William Christenberry

[Spring 2008] by James Campbell Interest in contemporary photography has reached a fever pitch. In 2006, at Sotheby’s in New York, a huge colour print by Andreas Gursky (dating from 1999) went on the block and sold for $2,256,000. Six months earlier, Richard Prince’s seminal work Untitled (Cowboy), a 1989 Ektacolor print of the Marlboro man, […]

TWENTY YEARS OF CIEL VARIABLE: Twenty Years of Photography – Jacques Doyon

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

[Fall 2007] by Jacques Doyon This is the first part of our review of twenty years of Ciel variable. It offers an overview of the metamorphoses that the magazine has had over the years as photographic practices evolved, their field of application broadened, they were increasingly recognized by the art world, and their institutional environment […]

Photographic Projects for the Web: Site Recognition – Sylvie Parent

Ciel variable 77 – CULTURAL TOURISM | Essays
Authors: Sylvie Parent | Artists: Charles Pratt, Dan Phiffer, Don Sinclair, Kati London, Marketa Bankova, Mushon Zer-Aviv, Ran Tao, Thomas Duc

[Fall 2007] by Sylvie Parent An awareness of geography has never been totally absent from the Web. At first, however, it tended to be obscured behind utopian discourses on planetary connectivity. As the early enthusiasm about the Internet developed, regional places and specificities tended to become blurred. In recent years, though, free, user-friendly cartography tools […]

Du statique au dynamique, projets photographiques pour le Web – Sylvie Parent

Ciel variable 76 - MAPPING | Essays
Authors: Sylvie Parent | Artists: Isabelle Hayeur, Karen Trask

This article was originally published only in French. No translation is available. Summary In this essay, the author looks into photographic practices of recent years that use the fluid space of the World Wide Web as their production and exhibition medium, forgoing the static quality of printed images. The text presents a selection of works […]

Le World Press Photo ou le photojournalisme au Salon – Vincent Lavoie

Ciel variable 74 - LOGOS | Essays
Authors: Vincent Lavoie | Artists: George Merillon

[Winter 2006-2007] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract The World Press Photo grand prize, one of the most important distinctions awarded in the photojournalism field, has been handed out every year since 1955 to the person who makes […]

Recollecting home, Gabor Szilasi’s photographs of Exile and Return – Sharon Murray

Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Essays
Authors: Sharon Murray | Artists: Gabor Szilasi

[Fall 2006] What is less well known is that he photographed in Hungary around the time of his flight to Canada in 1957 and again during his return to Budapest more than twenty years later. Photography was fundamental to Szilasi’s experience: it acted as a means for him to both articulate and negotiate the disjunction […]

La tyrannie paysagère – Suzanne Paquet

Ciel variable 73 - THEATRE OF MELANCHOLIA | Essays

[Fall 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Since the nineteenth century, the rule for collecting photographic “landscapes” has allowed a certain “tyranny of the landscape” to endure and proliferate, making it so that the capturing of places […]

Edward Burtynsky – Bruno Chalifour, L’oeil d’un coloriste sur le sublime contemporain

Ciel variable 72 - PHOTO PERFORMANCE | Essays
Authors: Bruno Chalifour | Artists: Edward Burtynsky

[Summer 2006] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract This article addresses the new work by Edward Burtynsky as it was presented, in part, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. In this exhibition, twenty-four images on contemporary China were […]

(Un)framing Interior Views Cultural Geography in the Work of Lynne Cohen – Jean-François Bélisle

Ciel variable 71 - IMAGE WORLD | Essays
Authors: Jean-François Bélisle | Artists: Lynne Cohen

[Spring 2006] by Jean-François Bélisle Since the early 1970s, Cohen has lived and worked in no fewer than nine countries, photographing unpopulated interiors in public and private establishments such as schools, spas, and laboratories. Her practice has been informed by her nomadic lifestyle. Her mostly black-and-white images may seem to be documentations of specific awkward […]

Life on the Edge of Perception: Immobility in Recent Video Installations – Randolph Jordan

Ciel variable 67 - STILL MOVING | Essays
Authors: Randolf Jordan | Artists: David Claerbout, NomIg

[Spring 2005] by Randolph Jordan Frame-by-frame analysis confirms that beneath the apparent non-movement of the plant world, the most awful and violent things are brewing: heart-rending torsions, horrible intertwinings, endless growth . . . such is Man. No moment is ever as intense as when there is no more outward bodily agitation to hide the infinitesimal speed […]

Angela Grauerholz et ses livres (extraits) – Colette Tougas

Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Essays
Authors: Colette Tougas | Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Spring 2005] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract In this essay, the author stresses two characteristics of Angela Grauerholz’s photographic corpus: the fortuitous and the systematic. The author highlights the important role played by desire on the part […]

Between Heaven and Earth, the Loci and the Cosmos: At Work in the Reading Room for the Working Artist – Cheryl Simon

Ciel variable 66 - ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ | Essays
Authors: Cheryl Simon | Artists: Angela Grauerholz

by Cheryl Simon The relation of language to the world is one of analogy rather than of signification; or rather, [the value of words] as signs and their duplicating function are superimposed; they speak the heaven and the earth of which they are the image. Language possesses a symbolic function; but since the disaster at […]

Anne Bénichou – Renouer avec l’esthétique de l’archive photographique

Ciel variable 59 - ARCHIVES | Essays
Authors: Anne Bénichou | Artists: Angela Grauerholz, Melvin Charney

[Fall 2002] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Abstract Since the 1960s, a number of Western art practices have revived the æsthetic of the photographic archive as it was developed in the nineteenth century. Starting from the work of […]

Frontières – Robert Lévesque

Ciel variable 55 – BOUNDARIES | Essays
Authors: Robert Lévesque | Artists: Geoffrey James

[Fall 2001] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Lévesque quotes a poem by Lamartine to show that, from century to century, idealism collides with the notion of borders, the historical factor in wars and deaths. His text, inhabited […]

Hyperpaysages, À l’affût de territoires réticulaires et mentaux. – Luc Lévesque

Ciel variable 54 - GARDENS-LANDSCAPES | Essays
Authors: Luc Lévesque

[Spring 2001] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Although, by working to push the limits of the gaze, photography indirectly contributes to stimulating new paths for the garden, the elusive complexity of the garden reciprocally defies capture by […]

La mémoire et le double – François Paré

Ciel variable 53 - IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: François Paré | Artists: Raymonde April

[Winter 2000-2001] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary This text, the product of parallel readings of Mercure, a novel by Amélie Nothomb, and L’avenir de la mémoire, an essay by Fernand Dumont, explores the tight links between identity, […]

Reading Photographs: Playing the Visual Literacy Game – Susan Close

Ciel variable 52 - EVERYDAY OBJECTS | Essays
Authors: Susan Close

[Fall 2000] by Susan Close A knowledge of photography is just as important as that of the alphabet. The illiterate of the future will be ignorant of the use of camera and pen alike. –Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 1923 But What Does It Mean to Read a Photograph? Because of its representational and documentary qualities, photography has, […]

Une esthétique de chiffonnier (le photographe itinérant) – Olivier Asselin

Ciel variable 51 – ELSEWERE… NOWHERE | Essays
Authors: Olivier Asselin | Artists: Eugène Atget

[Summer 2000] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary Asselin recalls the various modem figures of the walker and the modalities of their aesthetic contemplation. The photographer bears a resemblance to the Baudelairean figure of the flâneur, torn between […]

Erres – Guy Sioui Durand

Ciel variable 50 - APPROACHING THE PLACE | Essays
Authors: Guy Sioui Durand | Artists: Jeffrey Thomas

[Spring 2000] This article was originally published only in French. No translation is available. Summary A double artistic meaning is superimposed on the notion of landscape: invented images and real cultural territories. Adopting horizontality as a visual point of reference, Civilisation by Quebecer Ivan Binet and Cold City Frieze by Iroquois Jeffrey Thomas wander nomadically […]

FIVE OBJECT(ION)S from which to begin – Peter Dubé

Ciel variable 49 - (THE OBJECT) | Essays
Authors: Peter Dubé

[Winter 1999-2000] by Peter Dubé One I clear my mind to walk into an empty room; a triumph of austerity. Carefully hung photographs line the shiny walls. Each frame is carefully positioned in relation to its neighbour, gracefully distanced. The glass atop the paper does not disrupt. Landscapes in soft, though oddly brilliant, colours. A […]

Les axes de la continuité – Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 48 – QUEBEC PHOTO, THE 90S | Essays
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Alain Paiement, Carol Dallaire, Loren Williams, Lucie Lefebvre, Nathalie Caron

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

Interim Report – Martha Langford

Ciel variable 48 – QUEBEC PHOTO, THE 90S | Essays
Authors: Martha Langford | Artists: Ariane Thézé, Donigan Cumming, Raymonde April, Roberto Pellegrinuzzi, Serge Clément, Sylvie Readman

[Fall 1999] by Martha Langford Last time (the first time), millennial anxiety was deferred by a strategic announcement from the church fathers: the population’s fears of the apocalypse were premature, for the year to worry about was not 1000, but 1033. Logical enough, and pretty clever, for by then one could expect the people to […]

La Poésie mais après… : Un entretien avec Élène Tremblay – Jennifer Couëlle

Ciel variable 48 – QUEBEC PHOTO, THE 90S | Essays
Authors: Jennifer Couëlle | Artists: Élène Tremblay

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

Out of sight, we need glasses or a picture in our wallet – Sylvie Laliberté

Ciel variable 47 - AFFECTION | Essays
Authors: Sylvie Laliberté

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

Assujettir – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 46 - THE SUBJECT, THE AUTOPORTRAIT | Essays
Authors: Sylvain Campeau

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

Hors champs et tache aveugle – Jean-Pierre Latour

Ciel variable 45 - (OFF CAMERA) | Essays
Authors: Jean-Pierre Latour

[Winter 1998-1999] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

L’autofiction – Régine Robin

Ciel variable 44 - THEATER OF REALITIES | Essays
Authors: Régine Robin

[Fall 1998] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary This article discusses the new developments in autobiography, the featuring of the self in literature and photography, in a hybrid genre that Serge Doubrovsky has called “self-fiction.” The examples used […]

Que vaut la photographie contemporaine ? – Éric Devlin

Ciel variable 43 - TERRITORY AND LANDSCAPE | Essays
Authors: Éric Devlin

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

Lettre d’un égaré – Anne Cauquelin

Ciel variable 42 - AUTHENTICITY 3 | Essays
Authors: Anne Cauquelin

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

On the Dissipation of the Authentic – Francine Dagenais

Ciel variable 41 - AUTHENTICITY 2 | Essays
Authors: Francine Dagenais

[Winter 1997-1998] by Francine Dagenais Authenticity as it relates to representation has always been associated with the concept of essence circumscribed, at least in part, by its opposite, non-essence. We have established, quite logically, marked differentiations between essence, purity, truth, and uniqueness, on the one hand, and fusion, hybridity, compromise, and multiplicity, on the other. […]

Me, my Grandmother, the Object, and the Others – Jennifer Couëlle

Ciel Variable 40 - THE UPCOMING GENERATION | Essays
Authors: Jennifer Couëlle

[Fall 1997] by Jennifer Couëlle An exhibition whose objective is to present the work of young and not so young, but above all relatively unknown artists raises expectations – if not particularly with regard to specifics of the works presented, then certainly with regard to what we could call trends. It is an exercise not […]

Valeur d’échange de l’authenticité – Michaël Lachance

Ciel variable 39 - AUTHENTICITY 1 | Essays
Authors: Michaël Lachance

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

Être dans l’image – Serge Tisseron

Ciel variable 38 - DESIRE | Essays
Authors: Serge Tisseron

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

The Photographic Activity of “Visual Culture” – Cheryl Simon

Ciel variable 37 - THE PLACE | Essays
Authors: Cheryl Simon

[Hiver 1996-1997] by Cheryl Simon Last summer, October magazine ran a special issue on “visual culture.” Offering an “initial account of [the] uses and abuses” of this emergent concept, co-editors Rosalind Krauss and Hal Foster defined the term as “both a partial description of a social world mediated by commodity images and visual technologies, and […]

Les fins de l’ontologie photographique – Vincent Lavoie

Ciel variable 36 -"POETIC" PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Vincent Lavoie

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

Révolte, photographie et immatérialité : provocation ou manifeste ? – Marcel Blouin

Ciel variable 35 - DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Marcel Blouin

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

Le silence des agneaux – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 34 - UNTITLED | Essays
Authors: Sylvain Campeau

[Spring 1996] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Summary On September 23, 1995, Vox Populi, in collaboration with the Musée d’art contemporain, organized a conference entitled “The Presence of Photography in Museum Collections: Specificity of a Medium and […]

Ginette Bouchard, Floris Umbra – Christian Gattinoni, La défloraison voluptueuse des nouvelles images

Ciel variable 33 - 001100110110001111001011 | Essays
Authors: Christian Gattinoni | Artists: Ginette Bouchard

[Winter 1995-1996] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Le jeu du temps – Jean-Claude Lemagny (Supplement)

Ciel variable 32 - UNTITLED + SUPPLEMENT | Essays
Authors: Jean-Claude Lemagny

[Fall 1995] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. A history, a perspective, a place – Pierre Dessureault (Supplement)

Ciel variable 32 - UNTITLED + SUPPLEMENT | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

[Fall 1995] by Pierre Dessureault A museum is not only the sum of the objects in its collections but the history of an institution and a perspective on a particular area of creative expression. The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, formerly the Still Photography Division of the National Film Board of Canada, was established in […]

… d’une certaine tradition – Emmanuelle Léonard et Eugénie Robitaille

Ciel variable 32 - UNTITLED + SUPPLEMENT | Essays
Authors: Emmanuelle Léonard, Eugénie Robitaille

[Fall 1995] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Fiction – Sharon Harper

Ciel variable 32 - UNTITLED + SUPPLEMENT | Essays
Authors: Sharon Harper

[Fall 1995] by Sharon Harper A certain tendency, a tradition, germinated in Québec several decades ago with the work of John Max, through to that of Raymonde April and Michel Campeau. Recently, the second set of leaves in this growing tradition has started to open itself up to the photographic community and the art-going public. […]

La présence de la photographie dans les collections des musées. Spécificité d’un médium… d’une culture – Marie-Josée Jean (Supplément)

Ciel variable 32 - UNTITLED + SUPPLEMENT | Essays
Authors: Marie-Josée Jean

[Fall 1995] by Marie-Josée Jean Conference and exhibitions co-ordinator Since it was invented, photography has been recognized for the sensitivity and intensity of its formal expression. With the rise of modernism, attention was brought to bear on the ability of photography to crystallize fleeting moments. This ambivalent relationship between the literal and the figurative led […]

Fiction – Robert Legendre

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

[Fall 1995] by Robert Legendre The research group formed of Concordia University students directed by Professor Penny Cousineau, some of whose work we are presenting in this portfolio, is composed of Gema Alberto, Marie-Josée Desrochers, Loren Williams, Emmanuelle Léonard, Sharon Harper, Steve Leroux, Eugénie Robitaille, Xuan-Hui Nguyen, Jackie Wexler, Martin Villeneuve, Nicholas Michel, and Yan […]

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