Michel Campeau

Capital Camera Exchange Inc.
Nov. 27, 2019 to Jan. 25, 2020

Vernissage : Wednesday November 27, at 6 p.m.  

The exhibition Capital Camera Exchange Inc. presents ten photographs from the eponymous series, as well as a half-dozen analog prints from that of Week-end au « Paradis terrestre »!  The Capital Camera Exchange Inc. photos “found” by Michel Campeau constitute an encyclopedic eulogy revealing the interactions and contortions of bodies ensuing from snapshots taken by an anonymous amateur. They are brought together here in a collection that depicts the rituals that, only yesterday, shaped the high points of community life for our parents’ generation. It continues in the same autobiographical and documentary vein as Campeau’s previous series, especially Week-end au « Paradis terrestre »!from which one would think the works in the new collection were drawn. 

In addition, an accordion-fold book (a Leporello) will be spread out on a long table in the centre of the exhibition gallery. The images it contains are digital fragments of postcards from the collection that the artist has patiently put together over the last years. Yet again, the photographic pose is at the core of this new work.

Michel Campeau lives and works in Montréal. His work can be found in the world’s most important collections of contemporary photography. In 2013, both the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the National Gallery of Canada devoted solo exhibitions to it, and in 2015 his photographs were also shown in Paris, in the Centre Pompidou exhibition Qu’est-ce que la photographie ? In 2018 it was the turn of the McCord Museum to mount the major exhibition entitled Michel Campeau: Life Before Digital

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