http://www.galeriesimonblais.com/en/accueil.php
I went to see "Kiev" today at Gallerie Simon Blais, in Montréal, the work of photographer Eliane Excoffier.
The title was what got me of course; that a photo exhibit had the same name as one of my cameras just triggered the nerd curiosity--to be exact, though, my Kiev is the 4a rangefinder while Excoffier's is the Kiev 60 medium format SLR.
I try to visit the Simon Blais gallery regularly, partly because it's in my neighbourhood, but also because it recurrently features photographers. Like most prominent art galleries, they both fascinate and annoy me. Fascinate me because they can get absolutely brilliant artists; annoy me because it always remind me of the isolated world in which modern art lives.
"Kiev" is a little bit of both. The project is a series of black and white photographs taken with the Kiev 60 on a paper negative. The paper negative was then put in the enlarger and laboriously printed in the darkroom. Something like 10 to 30 minutes was needed to enlarge a single paper negative, so this is a labour of love. The photos have that dreamy quality peculiar to paper negatives, like Fox Talbot's calotypes. Because they require long exposure in-camera, that property was exploited in the composition of the picture: moving heads, superpositions, missing limbs, ghosts.
It's hard to describe exactly what the pictures are about, of course, because they mean visually, not in words, but they focus primarily on the female body. They inhabit the vaguely Victorian backwaters of our brains, and the themes of entrapment, sexuality, as well as the grotesque, veils, ropes, hands, legs, gesture.
That's where the exhibit is a little bit of both brilliant and annoying. Anybody who spent time around BFA/MFA students will recognize the familiar obsessions with sex, death, the gothic tone of the pictures, and what it depicts. If the execution were not original, sustained, and focused, this would be a typical scholarly disaster. The tight reins over the printing, the process, and the simplicity of subjects hold the photos together. Sometimes they are uninteresting, but never cringe-inducing catastrophes. The best pictures really stick in your head, and exemplify why the body is a legitimate subject in photography.
A glass display case near the entrance shows together the Kiev 60 and two paper negatives, and I can't help thinking that many people will be absolutely at a loss to figure out what these "things" are, and how the hell one could take photos with it. When you spend a little too much of your time on photography boards, those things are not so striking, but the surprise to you is that other people are surprised!
The exhibit is closing tomorrow, so I guess nobody here will ever go see it, but I promise to write an earlier review next time I go to the galleries...
Kiev, Montreal 
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