The Month of Photography in Montreal

The Mois of the Photograph in Montreal is a Festival which is held every two years with Montreal. In addition to presenting photographic works of international scale, it makes it possible the public to meet the photographers by the means of conferences, varnishings, conferences. But it is also the occasion of an in-depth reflection on the medium.

Cultural environment

The photograph in Canada

The Canada proposes three principal centers with the amateurs of photography. All the three are located in half is country:

Ottawa, the political capital with the National Gallery which includes the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography
Toronto, the economic capital with its annual festival “Contact” in May, its galleries private and the AGO (Art gallery of Ontario)
Montreal with its Month of Photography.

Montreal and culture

Montreal can almost claim with a statute of Canadian capital of the culture by the number of its festivals: thus photographs, but also contemporary dance, jazz, film, theater… With that it is advisable to add a strong university activity in the artistic fields with the UQAM (University from Quebec to Montreal), Concordia, and McGill (anglophone university). All the three are partners of the Month of the Photograph as well by the loan of spaces of exposure as by the active participation of their teachers and students. Institutional side Montreal also counts, and inter alia, a Museum of Beautiful arts, a Museum of Contemporary art, several arts centres, private galleries or with not-lucrative goal.

The Month of the Photograph in Montreal

Operation

The Month of the Photograph in Montreal east, since the edition 2003, an independent festival under the responsibility of an administrative director Chuck Samuels, who always preserves his humor and his effectiveness some that is the level of stress) and of a team certainly reduced but particularly active. Several partners are also put at contribution and in particular the VOX which organized the festival until 2002 and which decided to make an independent organism of it.

The budget over 2 years is approximately 700.000 Canadian dollars, in significant decrease compared to 2003. A budget quite lower than those of the big brothers of Arles or Paris, a reduced team, the absence of private sponsors, the Month of the Photograph 2005 succeeds in combining photography Montréalaise, Québécoise, national and international successfully. With Fotofest with Houston (Texas), they are the two only at the same time popular festivals and of international quality of the American northern continent (Toronto is more local), reaffirming the firm will of the elected officials montréalais and Québécois (Quebec obtained a council with Arts and Letters whereas one still seeks a ministry for the culture in the south of the Canadian border where one undoubtedly awaits a “providential” intervention of type “Intelligent Design”) to give to Montreal a cultural dimension that few cities divide on the scale of planet. A black spot however remains: it would seem that the expenditure somewhat exceeded the receipts and the deficit proves to be renewable what undoubtedly will force the office of the festival to seek other financings for its version 2007.

9th edition (September 2005)

The ninth edition was held from September 8th to October 10th under the crook of Martha Langford, historian of photography, teaching with the university of Concordia, police chief of exposure, former direct founder of the Canadian museum of photography.

Image & Imagination

It was the general topic selected trying “to clarify a neglected aspect of the photographic experiment: life of an image in the spirit of the spectator”. Idea certainly original but of which the resolution does not seem, and was not, of most obvious. Admittedly, it is true that the interest, the beauty of a work always reside, at the end of the day, in the glance of the spectator, however each spectator, in spite of a cultural bottom at least shared, has, compared to a given work, an approach and an answer which are clean for him. How can one give an account of the life of an image in the spirit of the spectator, as an personal experience or by a compilation of testimonys, which becomes a exercise having milked more with the Anthropologie, the Psychologie, or the Sociologie that with an artistic practice. In fact, and that one reassures, the exposures showed of the artistic sights and approaches idiosyncrasic (individual) which undoubtedly provided only few answers to the premise of the festival.

Slope of the topic

Beyond this central theme, the Month declined about it in the following way in three headings:

Aimed at imaginary , which opens all large the windows of perception. The sight and the other directions are stimulated here by works which request all the body.
To reflect it to oneself, rejouer the other , which calls in question the social and space borders. The spectators are invited to imagine their roles vis-a-vis the past, at the present and in the future of planet.
a way of closing the eyes , which penetrates the world of the invisible one, of the phantoms and other phenomena of appearance. The participation of the public is crucial there, since these images cannot materialize without the imagination of the spectator.

Characteristics

The program 2005, in addition to some 26 exposures including the participation of almost a hundred artists, offered a festival of opening on September 8th, varnishings in the presence of many artists from September 8th to 14th, of the conferences of artists, the guided visits and a two days conference open to the public September 22nd and 23rd. The evening of the Friday, September 9 paid homage to the important participation of the women artists this year. Answering a Co-definite schedule of conditions by the public festival and its financeurs (Town of Montreal, province of Quebec, federal state), a vast majority of the participants were Canadian, a decision which makes it possible any Canadian or foreign visitor to appreciate not only reality but also the diversity of the Canadian photographic production. The Month, in collaboration with VOX and UQAM, proposed two retrospectives of Canadian conceptual artists of international reputation using photography, Michael Snow and Iain Baxter. Of Soaped of Michel Campeau to the Irradiations of Denis Farley, while passing through Randall Anderson, Marc Audette, Diane Borsato, Destiny Deacon, Evergon, Michael Flomen, Rafael Goldchain, and Arthur Renwick, inter alia…, Canadian creative photography is quite alive. The quality of these productions did not have anything to envy that of the famous foreign guests, of the series of the free parking spaces of Martin Parr (present during the week of opening), with the photographs of the Joel Sternfeld, Carolee Schneeman, Tracey Moffatt, Shana and Robert Parke-Harrison, Glenn Sloggett, Karen Brett. The only French representation consisted of a work iconoclastic of invention of a fictitious city, Glooscap , by Alain Bublex. One can regret here that a Canadian certainly, but Québécois international festival also, grants also little place to photography French and more generally French-speaking. The reason was certainly this year the little of finances available to the level of the Cultural Affairs of the French consulate, thus, also undoubtedly, the choices of a perfectly bilingual police chief of exposure certainly but of anglophone culture. For this reason it was interesting to note that it quasi totality of the French interventions were translated into English, that the French-speaking Canadian photographers often expressed themselves in English, but that the step reverses was far from taking place. Having also made the experiment of Contact to Toronto, where systematically nothing is translated into French, I can include/understand the Québécois aggravation sometimes expressed against the linguistic practices of the fellow-citizens in anglophone areas!

Discovered

On a level even more subjective, I would like to stop me here on some discoveries or very favorites of this festival.

First of all the fantastic and philosophical work of the American couple Shana and Robert Parke-Harrison exposed to the city of arts of the circus, Tohu. This work is extracted from their series the brother of the architect where Robert, “Mister everyone”, intervenes in dark traditional costume in a landscape that his/her brother, the architect, had to create but who is not without defect. Robert thus invents naive and elaborate, made machines bric and the broques ones, and spider monkey with the illusory task to be repaired the lapses of memory and blunders of his creator of brother, the whole in landscapes onirico-fanstastic in black and white. The technical control and poetic esthetics deployed are such as their work is undoubtedly unequalled in the history of photography.

The center of art of Amherst presented, with work of Susan Butler and Lindy Lee, a series, Toujours in the chapter of the reports of the evils of this world , the center of arts Saidye Bronfman received works of Noritoshi Hirakawa, Anna Palakunnathu Matthew, Michael Ensminger, and Rafael Goldchain. These the last two artists have steps which seem one of the other on the other hand but by juxtaposition are supplemented in fact. Michael Ensminger proposes a series of images black and white of the instantaneous type “snapshot” or taken on the sharp one of a man, itself, with the appearance of tramp, upright on the pavement or the side of busy main street. The examples are of the type: I accept stocks options , or My son is in the honnor roll of its school , Soutenez our troops , or I lost 28 kilos, ask me how! , Consume! .

The work of Rafael Goldchain consists of a series of portraits of men and women, an alignment somewhat stereotyped Jewish characters, men and women, whom it reconstituted by using its own face like raw material and by entrusting it to the care of make-up men. Taken in Harcourt, the effect is seizing and comic. Another attractive series is that of Arthur Renwick, descending from the First Nations (Amerindian) itself, the artist pays homage to the chiefs and warriors who went to Washington to sign the treaty of Strong Laramie in 1868. Each vertical panel is composed for its lower half, of a landscape of the plains of South Dakota. The higher half consists of an aluminum foil bored of a broad punctuation mark with through which one can see the sheet of copper placed in bottom. Aluminum and copper are two metals which the largest Canadian ore company extracts in the center and the west from the country, employing the populations autochtones that it drives out of their traditional territories. The father of the artist, and Renwick itself, worked for this company. Renwick senior as a great number of minors lost there his health, a problem partly due to the unhealthy terms of employment. The punctuation marks are those which were modified in the treaty, by changing the direction with the profit of the government American and of the industrialists who pushed with the expansion and the exploitation of the territories of the west. The series of photographs laid out on the walls of a small room gives him an atmosphere of meditation and intense solemnity.

Contrary to these artists subjected to altruistic concerns, English Karen Brett presented an astonishing series to the gallery Powerhouse, The Myth off Sexual Loss (the myth of the loss of sexuality). Great square photographs color show closes-up of elderly devoting itself to the pleasures of the sex. Karen Brett is nurse and artist. Its observation of the elderly led it to carry out right and strong images which question our generally accepted ideas and quasi the taboos on the matter of our culture. What all these artists have in common it is an acute sense of the adequacy of the form and bottom, the judicious use of photographic esthetics at ends of expression and of communication, engagement of the artist in the world which surrounds it without for that falling into propaganda and losing there its Article has this list one could also add works of two Canadian artists, metaphorical however, Denis Farley and Michel Campeau.

Characteristics

The Month of the Photograph in Montreal, beyond the presentation of hundreds of images, it is also an in-depth reflection on the medium. As it was previously indicated, the characteristic of this festival consists of close links maintained with the three university local (where, moreover teach the police chief general of this year, Martha Langford, as well as the police chief of the very interesting edition 2003, Vincent Lavoie). A conference “historian” (rather than “historical”) and critical was held September 22nd and 23rd in the splendid buildings of the Canadian center of Architecture. The guests were Geoffrey Batchen (City University off New York), Vincent Lavoie (UQAM), Fae Brauer (University off New South Wales), Michel Campeau, Holly King, Michael Snow, Francine Dagenais (Université McGill), Martyn Jolly (Australian National University), Louise Déry, Carolee Schneeman, Kirsty Robertson (Queen' S University), and Peggy scale (Toronto).

See too

Official site of the month of photography in Montreal.

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