Montreal is currently housing the 10th presentation of Mois de la Photo, a month long artistic celebration featuring more than 30 solo-exhibits, all paying tribute to the art of photography. ‘Replaying Narrative’ is the theme of this year’s presentation and now, armed with a little insight after viewing some of the exhibits, I will provide a narrative of my own about my experiences with Mois de la Photo.
So far, I’ve viewed three different art displays and each artist has quite a varied approach to the traditional idea of a photograph and its ability to tell a story. One artist has digitally altered photos that were initially taken 40 – 70 years ago to blend still images into images with depth and motion, while another artist uses a billboard to relay a message to an audience of commuters along the Boulevard on St. Laurent. The display that I enjoyed the most is that of Christelle L’Heureux and her video installation entitled ‘L’Expérience Préhistorique’. She uses three different large-screen videos to recreate a Japanese film from the 1930s, ‘Gion No Shimai’: one video depicts a lecturing Japanese woman with a muted audio and shows French subtitles (the audience is able to listen to the woman’s actual speech via headsets), another video shows silent actors re-enacting the story and a third video shows a man speaking fluent French into a microphone.
I initially had no idea that each of these videos were connected until I started listening to the audio of the storyteller speaking in her native Japanese via headset. I am certainly not fluent in either Japanese or French, but once I began listening to the Japanese audio I noticed that with each voice inflection of the storyteller, the actions of the silent actors on the opposing video screen would change correspondingly. I then started paying more attention to the French subtitles (my French translating skills definitely need improvement) until I was able to piece together the overall story. The story centered on a cast of characters that each had romantic connections with one another, a video portrait perhaps about the complexities of human relationships.
To me, Christelle’s approach is very intricate and also very cool. While there is a lot going on in this cinematic display that requires the audience member’s attention, the interplay of each video is so in-sync that not even a language barrier (a DOUBLE language barrier, in my case) interferes with its storytelling abilities. Christelle successfully captures the essence of the ‘Replaying Narrative’ theme of Mois de la Photo, and demonstrates the universal strength of the photograph as a storytelling medium. A picture really is worth a thousand words, with or without subtitles.
“Mois de la Photo à Montréal.” 18 Sep. 2007 <www.moisdelaphoto.com/index.html>
“Bienvenue à la Cinémathèque.” 18 Sep. 2007 <www.cinematheque.qc.ca/>
Christelle Lheureux. “Christelle Lheureux.” 18 Sep. 2007 <http://christelle.lheureux.free.fr/?>
