As part of the 2022 France-Québec exchange curatorships, Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie is presenting Gabor Szilasi’s Charlevoix from September 17 to December 11, 2022, at Photaumnales, in Beauvais, France. The images for this exhibition were taken by the artist in this region in the fall of 1970.
Also, the feature documentary Gabor will be screened on September 25, 2022, during the weekend that Photaumnales opens, in the presence of Québec director Joannie Lafrenière. In the form of a dialogue between the Hungarian-born photographer and the director, the film paints a tender and colorful portrait of this humanist artist, who has spent the last 60 years documenting the eloquence of day-to-day life in his land of adoption, Québec. It will be remembered that Gabor Szilasi received the title of Compagnon des arts et des lettres du Québec in 2021.
From September 23, 2022, to April 30, 2023, Musée de Charlevoix is hosting Mission photographique Charlevoix, an exhibit devoted to that region’s landscape. It consists of photographs from the series Charlevoix carried out by Gabor Szilasi in 1970, and images taken 50 years later by the Chinese-born and Montreal-based photographer Chun Hua Catherine Dong. This artist was selected by Musée de Charlevoix and Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie to undertake a photographic mission documenting the contemporary Charlevoix landscape in 2021-2022. Initiated in 2016 by Rencontres, the photographic missions are intended to document the entirety of the contemporary Québec landscape and to constitute a provincial photo archival collection. They are undertaken in association with regional creation and dissemination organizations, thanks to the support of Loto-Québec.
In juxtaposing the images taken by Chun Hua Catherine Dong on her photo assignment and those captured by Gabor Szilasi a half-century ago, the Musée de Charlevoix exhibition allows us to see the evolution of the landscape in the region by way of two very different bodies of work. Gabor Szilasi’s traditional black and white photographs were captured with a 4 x 5 inch box camera and a Leica. For her creations, Chun Hua Catherine Dong explored 360-degree video technologies and virtual modeling. She depicts her own body in the images, using it as a human monument.
France-Québec exchange residencies
In the context of the France-Québec exchange residencies in literature, poetry and visual arts initiated by Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie and Diaphane, pôle photographique en Hauts-de-France, the Martinique-born visual artist Robert Charlotte and the French author Patrice Juiff visited the Gaspé region from August 28 to September 16, 2022, for a creation residency. In return, visual artist Judith Bellavance (Montreal, Québec) is in France for a creation residency until October 1, while Gaspesian author Philippe Garon (Bonaventure, Québec) will be there from October 15 to 29, 2022, for a writing residency. The results of these four residencies will be made public in 2023 at the 14th edition of Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie, and then as part of the 20th Photaumnales.