City Decoding

The city is a journey best discovered by walking over it. Even retracing one’s steps is a renewal. A photograph of the city is a tracing paper. The eye of the photographer draws on its semi-transparent surface. Behind the photograph lie the many meanings of the city. The photographer makes choices and asserts his views. Yet the meanings of the city are faint and open to the viewer’s re-elicitation.

Artist Statements

Raymond Aubin is fascinated by the relationship between humans and their technocultural extensions. In this series entitled, “Urbaneering”, he renews the genre of street photography. He presents diptychs of 3:1 panoramas, one taken above ground and the other underground. Each image portrays a verisimilar collage of motion blurred passers-by over a sharp cityscape. The elements of the diptychs solicit each other, sometimes in consonance, sometimes in dissonance. “Urbaneering” evokes the lonely and fleeting nature of city wanderings.

Manon Francoeur is interested in the hidden side of the contemporary landscape. Her urban landscapes are puzzles which reveal her unique vision. Manon has a strong interest in the practices and aesthetics of Zen. Her work is inspired partly by Miksang photography, a contemplative Buddhist practice, which requires letting oneself be guided by “flashes” of perception – those unplanned moments outside the realm of time where the eyes and the mind are in perfect harmony.

Raymond Savard’s passion is urban photography. He loves cities, large or small. Raymond thinks they are beautiful portraits of life. Raymond enjoys urban life, for its cultural diversity, its energy, and its contradictions. For Raymond, the heart and the soul of cities are its people, women, and men, whether they are happy or sad, rich or poor, young or old. With his camera in his hands, Raymond loves to follow their rhythms and tempos until he captures one brief moment of urban life.