In 1938, painter Paul-Émile Borduas travelled to the Gaspesia and Lower St. Lawrence regions as part of a provincial survey of domestic arts, crafts and tourism. He produced a vast photographic series comprising over 900 negatives. This government project was conducted by Jean-Marie Gauvreau, director of the École du meuble de Montréal where Borduas was teaching, at the request of Joseph Bilodeau, Quebec’s Minister of Municipal Affairs, Industry and Commerce in the cabinet of Premier Maurice Duplessis.

Borduas’s work remained largely unknown, with only a few photos published and the negatives lost for several decades. Found around 1998, they were the subject of a publication and travelling exhibition* organized by Gilles Lapointe and Raymond Montpetit for BAnQ**. Subsequently, these sets of photographs were lost.

It was by consulting the archives assembled by Paul-Émile Borduas and held at BAnQ that artists Carlos Ferrand and Serge Clément understood the depth of the 1938 project. They were dazzled by the richness of the content, overwhelmed by its visual quality, and by the coherence of the painter’s eye for photography. So much so, in fact, that they immediately decided to undertake more elaborate research with a view to producing a film on the subject.

The publication of the “Borduas en Gaspésie” portfolio is intended to provide financial support for Carlos Ferrand and Serge Clément’s film project, to be entitled “Borduas - photographie 1938”.

Serge Clément, April 2025

* Originally at Musée Le Chafaud, Percé.
** BAnQ: Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, then called BnQ (Bibliothèque nationale du Québec).