Mélissa Longpré
at Percé

About 15 years ago, when I first began photographing dead birds found along my path, I was filled with wonder at the chance to observe them up close and identify them more easily. At first, I took photographs in the field, but eventually, I brought some specimens back to my studio to create images in a controlled environment. Scientific curiosity, a pull of attraction and repulsion, empathy: dead birds rarely leave us indifferent. Over the course of my research, I became increasingly interested in the emotions we experience depending on the bird’s status — living being, inanimate body, collectible object, photographed subject. 

Over the years I accumulated bodies, feathers, and bones of birds fallen victim to cats or collisions with windows. After some of my images were circulated, friends and acquaintances began sending me photographs, often accompanied by messages that began: “I thought of you.” Some even entrusted me with specimens they had found. Through these gestures, they supported my practice and expressed a wish that these birds would not have died in vain. My work is seen as a way of paying tribute to them, of offering them a second life. 

At the start of 2024, a first body of work was exhibited in several venues. Following these events, I once again received messages, images, and even whole birds. Almost everywhere I went, a friend awaited me with a feathered being as a gift. 

This exhibition brings together the donations received during the summer of 2024, along with some of my own discoveries. I have combined these specimens with books pruned from the National Archives in Gaspé, covers from old volumes, and various papers accumulated in my studio. Here, I weave together memory and collection, exploring relationships of texture, color and wear, and examining our sensitive connection to vulnerability and disappearance. These images are also a way to reveal the poetry that persists in all things, even in death. 

Thanks to: Valérie Allard, Judith Bellavance, Viggo Belley-Cheseaux, Alice Couturier, Louis Couturier, Bilbo Cyr, Jean-François Dugas, Marie-Hélène Durocher, Josée Kaltenback, Michel Guérette.