WILDER BUILDING:
Silent regards
Silent regards
From the series
METROPOLIS: City in Transition
For a short while at the end of May 2003, I was allowed by the Société Immobilière du Quebec to use the top floor of the Wilder Building on Bleury street in Montreal, to continue a photographic project I had begun a year earlier and to transform some of the abandonned lofts into immense Camera Obscura.
The project titled "Metropolis: City in Transition" proposes to create elements of a photographic memory of the rapidly changing Montreal cityscape at the turn of the millennium. It features giant pinhole photographs captured from significant landmark locations.
By a strange combination of circumstances, the Wilder Building is exactly at the centre of the first giant pinhole photograph of this project, a photograph recently exhibitied at the Ko-Zen Gallery.
The building was vacant, silently awaiting the decision of the newly-elected government as to whether it would be demolished to make room for the new concert hall for the Montreal Symphonic Orchestra.
For a few days, the magic of pinhole projections of the cityscape on the walls of these huge lofts created an intangible universe where dream and reality merged together.
An unforgettable experience for the few privileged ones who had a chance to see them.
METROPOLIS: City in Transition
For a short while at the end of May 2003, I was allowed by the Société Immobilière du Quebec to use the top floor of the Wilder Building on Bleury street in Montreal, to continue a photographic project I had begun a year earlier and to transform some of the abandonned lofts into immense Camera Obscura.
The project titled "Metropolis: City in Transition" proposes to create elements of a photographic memory of the rapidly changing Montreal cityscape at the turn of the millennium. It features giant pinhole photographs captured from significant landmark locations.
By a strange combination of circumstances, the Wilder Building is exactly at the centre of the first giant pinhole photograph of this project, a photograph recently exhibitied at the Ko-Zen Gallery.
The building was vacant, silently awaiting the decision of the newly-elected government as to whether it would be demolished to make room for the new concert hall for the Montreal Symphonic Orchestra.
For a few days, the magic of pinhole projections of the cityscape on the walls of these huge lofts created an intangible universe where dream and reality merged together.
An unforgettable experience for the few privileged ones who had a chance to see them.
 |
The north-east room - 10th floor.
Cityscape projections from two 0,75" pinhole
repectively opened on the north and east elevations of the building.
Guy Glorieux is a Montreal photographer interested in the huge changes happening in the urban landscape and doing photographic research on the subject. He works with a variety of cameras from small to medium to large 11x14 format, indifferently using lens or pinhole.
For the project "Metropolis: City in Transition", his preference goes to the creation of giant pinhole photographs because of the wealth of details they provide and the unusual perspectives that are impossible to render with a lens camera. Instead of using a viewfinder, he works from "inside the camera" to frame his pictures, occasionally burning or dodging as the exposure takes place to get a more balanced image.
Using photographic paper as an emulsion, he creates giant 12 feet by 8 feet paper negatives which he later contact prints into a positive image. He believes that the viewer can widen his understanding of the surrounding urban environment through the interaction between the positive and the negative image.
© Guy Glorieux
Contemporary pinhole photography
For the project "Metropolis: City in Transition", his preference goes to the creation of giant pinhole photographs because of the wealth of details they provide and the unusual perspectives that are impossible to render with a lens camera. Instead of using a viewfinder, he works from "inside the camera" to frame his pictures, occasionally burning or dodging as the exposure takes place to get a more balanced image.
Using photographic paper as an emulsion, he creates giant 12 feet by 8 feet paper negatives which he later contact prints into a positive image. He believes that the viewer can widen his understanding of the surrounding urban environment through the interaction between the positive and the negative image.
© Guy Glorieux
Contemporary pinhole photography
The Wilder Building project was made possible thanks to the voluntary assisting work of
Meliza Ash
Renoi Chaar
Alexandre Chabot
Caroline Charbonneau
Claude-Emmanuelle Chiasson
Arianne Imbeault
The photographer can be reached at the following email address
Meliza Ash
Renoi Chaar
Alexandre Chabot
Caroline Charbonneau
Claude-Emmanuelle Chiasson
Arianne Imbeault
The photographer can be reached at the following email address