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Canadian Cultural Centre opens Michel Campeau Darkrooms (Chambres noires)

Canadian Cultural Centre presents Michel Campeau Darkrooms (Chambres noires), an exhibition on view September 26–October 26, 2012.


Michel Campeau, Sans-titre 7987 [Montréal, Québec], La chambre noire, 2005–2009.

omprising some thirty colour photographs taken between 2005 and 2009, Darkrooms is the composite portrait of that endangered place of revelation, the darkroom. Fragments of darkrooms visited in Vietnam, Niger, Mexico, Cuba, Canada, Germany, Belgium and France, the images are both intimate and transnational. Without the slightest hint of nostalgia and without ceding to the temptation of producing a photogenic image of the private place with restricted access shielded from the light, Campeau photographs the artist’s equipment and clutter, the context of his work in which instruments and techniques, as well as the traces of experiments, no longer serve to reveal an image but themselves become the subject of the image. Transmitted in pieces borrowed from various cultures and territories, exclusively seen from close up which makes seeing the big picture impossible and refers to a subjective individual presence, the very idea of the darkroom is thus not really revealed, or really objectified, and retains an extraordinary imaginary power.

This series was the subject of an important monograph, Darkrooms, published in 2007 by Nazraeli Press (United States) in the collection edited by Martin Parr; it was also the subject of a special report in New York-based magazine Aperture. Being shown for the first time in Paris, the series was first exhibited at the Rencontres d’Arles in 2010, then at the Château d’Eau in Toulouse and, this summer, at the Musée Nicéphore Niepce in Chalon-sur-Saône.

The exhibition Darkrooms is organized in partnership with the Galerie Simon Blais (Montréal), the Centre National des Arts Plastiques and with the support of Rencontres d’Arles.

Canadian Cultural Centre
5 rue de Constantine
75007 Paris, France
T+ 33 1 44 43 21 90
www.canada-culture.org

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