Photography

For over twenty years, I have lived by the shores of a river that has become polluted. I have long been observing the transformations of this watercourse, the changes in its ecosystems as well as the disappearance of some of the animal species that used to live in it. I wished to create a body of work that would bear witness to these man-made upheavals. To date, I have photographed in various bodies of water across North America, in polluted environments as well as healthy ecosystems.

The United States is one of the world’s biggest beef producers, cattle breeding is intensive and concentrated. These large farms have a significant impact on the environment.

In recent years there has been a sharp rise in clandestine immigration into the United States. The increase in the flow of migrants has given rise to tensions among the American population, which is deeply divided on the issue.

Like a postcard from a dystopian future, the Salton Sea is slowly drying up. The old salt-scorched beaches are now covered in a thick layer of toxic alluvial deposits. Before this poisoned mirage disappears for good, I wanted to capture its ephemeral landscapes, whose disquieting and ambiguous beauty continue to fascinate me.

The Western United States has been dealing with a major drought for close to twenty years. As a result, watercourses are drying up and reserves are lower than ever. During an extended trip across the United States in 2021-2022, I began photographing rivers and dams as part of my study of the water crisis.

During the summer of 2021, British Columbia saw the effects of a heat wave and an extreme drought that led to numerous forest fires. The town of Lytton was decimated and a number of others were on high alert. We know that variations in the climate have created conditions conducive to forest fires, but are they solely responsible for such disasters?

Fire is a normal part of forest life, but when it hits hard in forests that have not yet achieved the maturity required to regenerate, it takes hundreds of years to re-establish the original plant cover.

Le Camp de la Rivière was a protest camp on a logging road of an oil exploration site in the Gaspé area in Québec. This independent and peacefull movement began in 2017 to demand a halt to drilling. Filling the gap left by governments that have let us down, these environmental activists were fighting for a cleaner, healthier environment and a fairer society.

This body of work examines with a critical eye how hydroelectric power has transformed the landscape of Quebec. The project pays attention to how citizens have rallied in order to defend their region and to demand better protection for their environment.

The forlorn landscapes surrounding the Salton Sea are loaded with social, political, environmental and metaphoric implications.

I am in Paris’s Xth arrondissement when the events of Friday the 13th of November 2015 occur. The population is petrified, paralysed. While on a photographic mission in France, I get interested in the after effects of these attacks.

The European Court of Human Rights is the review body for tens of thousands of citizens each year. Some of them even camp right next to it in makeshift shelters. Their presence on these premises becomes for me a more general expression of disenchantment and indignation. They seem to be telling me another story: that of Europe’s deprived, of the marginalized of the global economy we know today.

On the Chemin des Prairies, farmland is giving way to a field of dwellings. 32,000 hectares of farmland have thus disappeared in the outskirts of Montreal to make way for real estate developments. The mutation of these periurban territories is irrevocably transforming the dynamics of our communities.

The images in this series were digitally constructed using photographs of model homes. Each of my models is a portrait that develops a different aspect of the relationship between our societies and the land they use. With humour, this body of work is presented as an investigation into suburbs.

These panoramas attention to our interest in the grandiose and our ambivalent attitude towards nature. They and ask us to consider how we construct our views of the land and what meaning or preconceptions we ascribe to it. How does a picture become “picturesque”? What do we not see while we are looking at “the view”?