Staged in very colorful scenes, this series of self-portraits is inspired my passion for beautiful and weird propos as well as my love for places that sem frozen in another era. Hello my name is is a series with a strong aesthetic and humourous flavor.

Captured over the time and over the course of different trips all around the world, these self-portraits reprensent pure moments of silliness. 

Presented from March 31 to September 10, 2023, at the McCord Stewart Museum in Montreal, the solo exhibition HOCHELAGA-MONTRÉAL EN MUTATION offered an intimate and colorful journey combining photography, video, installations, and poetic fragments. Started in 2005, this documentary project paints an intimate portrait of this Montreal neighborhood, a portrait in which I sought to give a dignified voice both to forgotten and marginalized individuals as well as to the significant people who have crossed my path during these two decades spent in Hochelaga. My intention was to highlight their beauty and vibrancy, without hiding the harshness of the experiences etched into their faces, bodies, and hearts, in order to shed light on both what remains of this working-class neighborhood and what is transforming as it gentrifies.

Gratitude to Pierre-Etienne Locas for the scenography, Benoit Bordeleau for the poetry, François Vallée for his invaluable support, Zoë Tousignant for the invitation, Leila Afriat and La Rue de la Poésie for the cultural mediation, Justin Mignot for the catalog, the entire McCord Stewart Museum team for their expertise, and all the beautiful humans who graciously offered their trust, time, and light throughout this project.

https://www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca/en/exhibitions/hochelaga-maisonneuve-evolving-montreal/

2023 

Invited in France to give workshops as part of a residency in collaboration with the Cité internationale de la langue française, the Centre des Monuments Nationaux and Diaphane (photographic pole in Haut-de-France), I had the pleasure to make precious encounters with different groups that I accompanied in the creation of a photographic series. For the occasion, they decided to dream of themselves differently, the young people imagining themselves living their old days peacefully and the elders, reconnecting with their child's heart and their youthful dreams. The result is this series entitled "Between Youth and Wisdom" which is a colorful and playful intergenerational encounter under the sign of joy, tenderness and humor.

2022

Born of the encounter with a lovely octogenarian vacationer, the series PLAYTIME poses a tender and playful look on the community of the golden age while pushing the taboos around the passage of time.

While I was in Florida to make a documentary about the snowbirds (Quebec retired community that migrates under the coconut trees to avoid the harshness of Quebec winters), it was after a festive evening at the bingo that I met Yvette. Quickly, a sincere friendship is born between us. This is followed by many trips under the palm trees in search of colorful decors matching our identical outfits in order to create funky stagings photos. Accomplices and coquettish, the two ladys thus become the twins of Hallandale, timeless characters abstracting from the half century that separates them,

PLAYTIME reflects the spirit of those recreational societies to which these migratory birds fly in search of a terrestrial paradise before the heavenly.

First, take two very different groups of people: immigrated teenagers from various backgrounds; and elderly, born and raised Montrealers. Then, bring them together. The outcome are colorful encounters - encounters filled with tenderness and humour, tears and laughters. Add to that the artist’s quirky eye and you get groovy portraits where fantasy meets personal experiences. Memories and ideas shared during the project became souvenirs of their own for everyone. 

The heteroclite and lively group got to know each other during numerous workshops led by drama teacher, Melissa Lefebvre. They shared intimate stories, talked about their lives, expressed their every emotions with no fear; they had formed a family. Matches were made between the youth and the elderly - the jokers, the sensitives, the exuberants, the poets -, and each team explored the highschool theater’s plentyfull dressing-room in search for outfits that would reveal the story of their relationship. 

What would they wear? Which atmosphere did they want to convey? Where would they be photographed? References and imagination spinned wildly as they had to create the set-up for their team portrait. With ease and fun, they became costumers, hair-stylists, producers, and mainly storytellers. Everyone’s ideas led to a creative aesthetic exploration, with playfulness, humour and complicity at its core. Age and roots were never an issue, they rather were the trigger to explore further. Following their whim, the budding performers turned modern-time adventurers, fox-trotters, hard-rockers, bookworms, gardeners, incarnating people from the 1930’s to the 2000’s in the most natural way. 

Though the participants’ lives and backgrounds seemed at first irreconcilable, each photo from Interwoven Roots reveals their bonding in warm colors. Brimful of details, a miror of the depth and power of human interactions, the series allows to grasp the social potential of collaboration between education and the arts.

Interwoven Roots is a project by high school drama teacher, Melissa Lefebvre, and photographer, Joannie Lafrenière. 

Special thank to Geneviève Desrosiers, Érika Essertaize and Yann Giraudet for their input in this project.

To see the short film directed by Paul Tom related to this project, its here:

https://vimeo.com/369923109

Commissioned is a series of portraits published as assignments for various artists, books, festivals and magazines.

The Voix maritimes photograph series is an homage to the St. Lawrence River, captured during the shooting of a documentary series about aficionados of the river, from Montréal to Anticosti. This patchwork of portraits displays privileged encounters with fishermen, seamen, craftsmen, lighthouse keepers, adventurers and artists united by their common love for the river. Sailing along both shores of the St. Lawrence, this series goes out to meet people with particular ways of life who offer us, each in their own way, a unique and complementary perspective on this river, which has, for centuries, shaped Quebec’s history and identity.

Through various encounters and cutting through everyday life, Wakamono paints a tender portrait of Japan’s youth. Focusing on the transitions from childhood to teenage years, and onward to adulthood, this series aims to be a contemplative observation of the places taken over by this generation as it builds its distinct identity.

Guided by my instinct and by the fascinating people I have met in the Land of the Rising Sun, my wish for this series was to honor the youth of Japan with tenderness and humor.

North of the 50^th parallel, in the middle of pine trees as far as eye can see, withstanding unending winters: Ekuanitshit, Innu reserve of 600 souls.

I spent a month in Ekuanitshit on the North Shore, during summer solstice. Through days where nighttime gets mixed up with daytime, my affectionate and curious gaze looked upon the Innu youth of this village located at the end of route 138. By focusing on this youth, growing up in a wild playground as vast as impressive, and facing many social and identity problems specific to most aboriginal communities, it can be observed that the territory becomes the metaphor of their wanderings.

These young people that retain a part of their childhood innocence, despite deep scars, are already swimming in the inherent difficulties of aboriginal life in a post-colonial and uneven country that still do not recognize itself as such.

Between the vastness of the landscape and the confinement in which this Innu youth lies, Solstice focuses on the quest for identity of these young people undergoing changes and finding themselves torn between modernity and traditions, the wild territory set in their hearts.

With the Wapikoni Mobile.

This series presents a colourful document of my wanderings with family and friends.

Entourage is no less than an incursion amongst the precious individuals who surround me and brighten my daily life.

Des maux illisibles is an interactive essay that portrays illiteracy in Quebec through the testimony of three illiterate : Mathieu, 18 years old, Sylvie, a 52 years old woman looking for a job and Diane, 42 and struggling with health problems. Each of these three examples reveals the daily reality of those who can neither read nor write. Their stories also leads us to think about the causes as well as social and economic impacts of illiteracy in three critical areas for the future of our society: education, employment and health.

Throught the words and faces of three illiterate, the interactive essay Des maux illisibles therefore portrays a society with feet of clay.

Produced by the NFB in collaboration with Le Devoir

View the full project here:
http://analphabetisme.onf.ca/

Encounters is a portrait series of everyday people whom I have had the chance to come across over time – in very unexpected situations. These lucky encounters with inspiring people are very well representative of my quest to understand the Other, and demonstrate my insatiable and vital interest in all human beings. My camera then becomes a pretext to meet and discover new horizons, and to let myself by surprised.

From Natashquan to Issoudun, with a stopover in Gaspésie, this series captures in a loving manner, different moments spent with good-hearted strangers who became, as secrets were being shared, friends.

A bundle of individual snapshots culled from a variety of series,  Chromatic showcases a rainbow of ambiances crystallized from my peregrinations through daily existence.

A compilation of photographs taken from a journey on the roads of the United States with my mom, the Backroad series is both a personal diary and a documentary of the American life. Through an epic escapade spanning more than 11,000 kilometers and nearly twenty states, this series provides a unique portrait of rural life in Middle America.

Combining portraits of people and places, this documentary series looks at the notions of territory and identity. With a tender look at these people encountered by chance along the way, this incursion on the American territory seeks to feel the pulse of the America that lives outside the major city centers.

Questioned by the cult that still dedicates a majority of Brazilians to the Catholic religion , I linger through this series, in the Holy Week and the various activities related to it . Legacy of Portuguese colonization , Catholicism was the official religion of the Brazilian State until the promulgation of the Republican Constitution of 1891 which established the secular state . Unlike other countries such as Canada , modernity and the past decades have had an unexpected impact in Brazil, in that they are not accompanied by a de-Christianization . In the province of Goias particular, semana santa is a festive period that Brazilians celebrate in style , with various masses and processions.

Colorful overview of a week flavor of faith and prayer.

Ferme Zero is an interactive documentary about the disappearance of small family farms in favor of agricultural mega-corporations. In this Web documentary about the final days of a small family farm in Saint-Rosaire, we bear witness to the auction of heavy-duty machinery, as well as a herd of cow. The auction becomes the culmination of a life that is about to change indelibly for the Houle family. A very emotional moment that reflects a sad reality: traditional farming crushed by debts, leaving behind experienced farmers and an irreplaceable family and agricultural heritage.

Produced by the NFB in collaboration with Le Devoir. 

Design and programming: DPT.

Freemont experience casts a more personal documentary spotlight on Las Vegas, city of sin and vice.

A paroxysm of decadence, this city where anything goes is a mecca for tourists in search of quick money, cheap entertainment, all-you-can-eat buffets, and alluring women.

A photographic journey through the kingdom of vice and broken promises, related through colourful images that bridge the gap between the trashy and the tender.

Shot over the summer of 2007, this series offers glimpses into the daily life of Chinese citizens in the lead-up to the breathlessly-awaited Beijing Olympic Games.

Poised in the latency and lingering of the pre-game period, Before the Games paints a portrait of the everyday routines and rituals of locals amidst both the chaos and eerie calm that Beijing 2008 ushered into their lives. 

Set in a changing China, the mundane is brought to the forefront using  casual contemplation – and a dose of humour.

A series of snapshots from a frosty January spent in the Land of the Rising Sun turn into a diary of my perambulations. A photo-touristic chronicle of places and sights not commonly presented by travel guides becomes a pretext for impromptu jaunts through the city, complete with unforgettable chance meetings with the locals along the way. 

Heavily tinged with the cinematic ambiance that permeated my Japanese expedition, this series is a means of expressing my interest for the splendor of daily experience.

Wandering in Bali is a colorful series drawn from a stay of several weeks in smell of jasmine in this lovely country.

Motorcycle rides, sweet and inspiraing encounters, day of scouting and nasi goreng were therefore the program of this epic Indonesian trip.