...by way of an artist statement
METROPOLIS - Ville en mutation |
| ...by way of an artist statement |
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The work presented on this site was first shown at the KoZen Gallery in Montreal in April 2003. It arises from personal research and thinking about the nature and aesthetics of the urban landscape and its photographic representation. ˇ Research on the pictorial meaning of the photograph and the chasm which can emerge between reality and its representation when non-traditional processes are used for picture-taking or in the darkroom. ˇ Thinking about the social structure and symbols lying behind the high-rise downtown architecture and the association with representations of the utopian city found in the work of Hugh Ferriss or Fritz Lang in the 1920-30's. The exhibition gravitates around two monumental pinhole photographs of the same scene - a 150"x96" paper-negative and its contact-positive - picturing the Montreal urban landscape extending from Place Ville-Marie to Place des Arts, as seen from the 9th floor of the Wyndham Montreal hotel. The giant pinhole photographs present Montreal as an abandoned city under a thundering sky, void of any life or human presence. The angle from which the picture was shot emphasizes the chaotic nature of the downtown architecture generally not perceived from ground level. By contrast, the 15 other pictures of the exhibition show a much more structured view of the city. But, because of the process used to print these images, there remains a conflict between the contemporaneous content of the photographs and their representation as pictures that seem to have been shot in the 1940's. This work is also an occasion to reflect on the theme of "Lost Montreal" and the need for photographic archives that portray large "cityscapes" such as the giant pinhole photograph of the downtown area. This picture will become no doubt an archival document. But, contrary to these spectacular panoramas constructed with the use of high resolution modern optics, this image takes us into a world of a complex aesthetism, filled with formal or contextual paradoxes (the least of which is not that the busy street corner Ste-Catherine & Jeanne-Mance is portrayed as an area empty of human presence) and significant anamorphic distortions. |