Musée de la Gaspésie and Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie invite the public to the vernissage of the exhibition Péninsule (Peninsula) in the presence of Michel Huneault, documentary photographer and visual artist. The vernissage will take place inside the museum, in the town of Gaspé, on October 20, 2022, in a happy hour formula. The exhibit will run until April 20, 2023.
With Péninsule, Michel Huneault (Montreal, Québec), wanted to do a speculative documentary project on climate change and its effects on the Gaspé Peninsula and the lower St-Laurent coastline. The artist traveled the territory with a laser level in order to mark where the water will climb to when the temperature increases by 2 to 4 degrees. The exhibition contains, among other things, some 30 photographs of the landscape thus marked by laser beam.
Michel Huneault’s work focuses on issues related to development, trauma, migration and other geographically complex realities, including the impact of climate change. He has a master’s degree from the University of California Berkeley, where he was a Rotary Peace Fellow studying the role of collective memory after large-scale traumatic events. Before devoting himself to photography, in 2008, he worked in international development for more than a decade.
His work on the Lac-Mégantic train disaster won the 2015 Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize. His project Post Tohoku, on the effects of the tsunami in Japan, was nominated for a Prix Pictet and received a Prix Antoine-Désilets in 2016. He adapted Roxham – about asylum seekers crossing the border from the United States to Canada – into a virtual-reality experience with the National Film Board of Canada in 2018. Also, the McCord Museum commissioned the artist to document the impact of Covid-19 on Montreal in 2020.
Top image : © Michel Huneault