Abandonments (2022)

Ongoing project

Over the past few years, I produced a set of images that I group together under the notion of abandonment. They refer to the passage of time, to places and people left behind. The COVID-related lockdown that began in the spring of 2020 accelerated my reflections on occupation of the territory and the scope of stopped time.

In the earliest days of the lockdown, I walked through my neighbourhoods in Montreal to see what effect the closures were having. As deserted streets and vacant businesses became increasingly graffitied and soiled, they began to appear as a microcosm of the urban, social, and human condition, reminding us that nothing lasts.

Etymologically, the term “abandon” is derived from “in the power of.” The verb “to abandon” means “to leave,” “to cease to take care of,” “to surrender to the power of.” The notion is complex, since it includes the actions of both abandoning and surrendering. And so it is: abandoned lands, abandoned citizenship, and women who confidently surrender themselves to photographic portraiture.

My corpus contains about a hundred images of places and people, most of which function as diptychs. The series are arranged on the wall according to their aesthetic, narrative, and conceptual correspondences. The theme of abandonment unfolds around temporal and spatial axes.