Addressing themes of the city, architecture, alienation, and nature, Métamorphose is the result of Serge Clément and Alexis Desgagnés’s shared exploration of the relationship between text and image and of the book format as both creative process and artwork.
The book is divided into three parts which, although they can function independently, are subtly interconnected. Clément’s series of photographs, Forêts, secrets & paradoxes, and Desgagnés’s Ornithologie, which brings together prose poems, photographs, and ink drawings, are positioned at the two ends of the book and oriented head to tail, so that the book can be read starting with either. In the centre a third part, entitled Gamble, represents a shared, interstitial space, allowing the two artists’ worlds to meet and merge. To produce the content of this new part, Clément and Desgagnés worked together on several photo shoots in Montreal.
