Photography

Selected projects and images

Underwater photography by Isabelle Hayeur of Spring Creek in Kansas

Troubled Waters
ongoing project

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. I wished to create a body of work that would bear witness to these man-made upheavals.

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Photography by Isabelle Hayeur of a cow in a Kansas feedlot

Rumination
2024

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.

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Isabelle Hayeur borderland migrants walking along the border wall in Jacumba California

Borderlands
2024

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.

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Photography by Isabelle Hayeur the Rio Grande in New Mexico

Parched Earth
Déshérence
2022 – 2023

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.

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Wild Times
2021

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?

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Family with a flag at the People's Convoy in Adelanto California, February 2022

Les édentés
The desplorables
2020 – 2022

Distressed by what was happening to us as a society during the pandemic, I took part in close to demonstrations in Montréal, Québec City and in California. These gatherings were equally emotional and festive; they brought together people from all walks of life, a motley crowd that danced and exchanged ideas.

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photography by Isabelle Hayeur about citizen resistance in the Gaspe peninsula in Quebec Le Camp de la Riviere

Le Camp de la Rivière
2017 – 2019

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.

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Desert Shores photography by Isabelle Hayeur about the ghost towns around the Salton Sea in California

Desert Shores
2015 – 2016

The forlorn landscapes surrounding the Salton Sea are loaded with social, political, environmental and metaphoric implications. They seem to mirror a lost America, an era in which everything seemed possible and accessible for all citizens. These strange lands give us another, unflattering image, of a nation more divided and unequal than ever.

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Photography by Isabelle Hayeur of the terrorist attacks in Paris, France, on November 13, 2015

République
2015 – 2016

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.

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Foreign Body
Corps étranger
2012 – 2013

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.

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Model Homes
Maisons Modèles
2004 – 2007

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.

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Artwork by Isabelle Hayeur showing a panoramic landscape created by digital photomontage

Destinations
2003 – 2004

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.

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