Focus – Ciel variable Magazine

Clara Gutsche, On Depicting the Immediate and the Enigmatic – Earl Miller

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Essays, Focus
Authors: Earl Miller | Artists: Clara Gutsche

As the recipient of a major award (the 2024 Scotiabank Photography Award), Clara Gutsche was the subject of a retrospective highlighting her interest in communities and architecture. In his essay based on his visit to The Image Centre, Earl Miller reviews each of the series on display and observes how age, the passing of the years, or “ the uncanny filter of skewed time”, as he writes, have shaped the artist.

Andrew Jackson, Little Burgundy – Rose Henriquez

Ciel variable 131 – COLLECTING | Essays, Focus
Artists: Andrew Jackson

Invited by the McCord Stewart Museum to photograph a Montreal neighbourhood, his own, Andrew Jackson offers a sensitive portrait of the Black community of Little Burgundy. His gaze, as Rose Henriquez notes, aligns with theories on the racialization of space and the spatialization of race. In this way, Andrew Jackson gives each of his subjects “the possibility of appropriating how one is represented, choosing how and when to be seen.”

Contemporary Photography in Poland – Amélie Laurence Fortin

Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS | Essays, Focus
Authors: Amélie Laurence Fortin

[Fall 2025] A Pink Cloud in a Grey Sky by Amélie Laurence Fortin [EXCERPT] “Our choices are not neutral; we are as vulnerable and sensitive to the effects of images as anyone else.” — Kamila Bondar and Łukasz Rusznica Introduced by a short wall text on the challenge of subjectivity and the importance of looking, […]

Marie-Jeanne Musiol, Luminous Imprints – Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS | Essays, Focus
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

[Fall 2025] Luminous Imprints by Pierre Dessureault [EXCERPT] Since 1994, Marie-Jeanne Musiol has been engaged in a unique exploration of the porous borders between how science and art represent nature. Most of the images in the exhibition I See Stars in the Deep Dark were from the series Bodies of Light and were made between […]

AI and Humanity – Jessica Ragazzini

Ciel variable 130 - PLANTS AND GARDENS | Essays, Focus
Authors: Jessica Ragazzini

[Fall 2025] AI and Humanity: Toward a New World of Poetics by Jessica Ragazzini [EXCERPT] In all subjectivity: The world according to AI is a brilliant but paradoxical exhibition – it claims to scrutinize AI while it exposes, above all, human fears of being surpassed, copied, or rendered obsolete. What I perceive is a humanity […]

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.