At the invitation of the Nantes organization Les PUI – Pratiques et Usages de l’Image, Québec artists Judith Bellavance and Maude Arsenault will be taking part in a public get-together on the subject of the photographic book at the arts center Le MAT in Ancenis-Saint-Géréon, France, on November 19, 2021. Accompanied by the executive and artistic director of Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie, Claude Goulet, they’ll share their views on their relationship with this type of publication, and present their works.
This gathering devoted to the Québec photobook will be happening as part of the exhibition “L’espace du livre no 2,” which runs until November 28, 2021, at the Le MAT arts center. This exhibit presents a selection of works relative to photography that address publishing as the intended outcome of an artistic approach.
“The two activities are an integral part of a broad project of exhibitions, exchanges and encounters concerning the photographic book that we initiated jointly with our French partner Les PUI in 2020,” Mr. Goulet explains. This year, the 2nd edition of the project also gave rise to an exhibit bringing together more than 25 Québec works and the same number of French books held in Nantes, France, in the spring, in Carleton-sur-Mer as part of the 12th Rencontres this past summer, and then at Maison de la culture Janine-Sutto, in Montreal, in September and October.
“We’re very happy that it’s possible once again to be part of a get-together about photobooks overseas with our French partners,” Mr. Goulet is delighted to announce. “Owing to the pandemic, the exhibition held in Nantes in the spring wasn’t able to host Québec artists, and similarly we weren’t able to welcome French artists in Québec.” At the 13th Rencontres, in the summer of 2022, the event is planning to host French artists once again for a photobook-based activity.
Leading up to the activity at the Le MAT arts center in Ancenis-Saint-Géréon, Claude Goulet, Judith Bellavance and Maude Arsenault will visit Paris Photo and Photaumnales with the aim of making discoveries and doing some networking.
Launch of 4 videos on the publication as objective
At the same time as the roundtable on the photographic book that took place this fall at Maison de la culture Janine-Sutto, in Montreal, Rencontres asked Émilie B. Guérette to conduct interviews with four participating Québec artists on the subject of the publication as objective. As a result, artists Geneviève Thibault (Matane, Québec) as well as Judith Bellavance, Serge Clément and Bertrand Carrière (Montreal, Québec) give their point of view on the subject in four videos.
See the videos in the L’espace du livre section