Guy GlorieuxGuy Glorieux’s pinhole camera photography exhibition at the McCord Museum presents Montreal from a unique perspective.
The exhibition, Impressions of a City: Montreal Through a Pinhole, features pinhole photography by French-born Canadian artist Glorieux. The eighteen prints showcase Montreal transformed from a vibrant metropolis into a disjointed ghost town.
Pinhole cameras are simple: they feature a small aperture, in this case 1.5 mm, which allows light to filter through onto photosensitive paper or film at the back of the box. The images are recorded as negatives, with light and dark reversed, and left and right mirrored. Most of the photographs in the exhibition were made with entire hotel rooms turned into makeshift cameras. Glorieux blocked out the windows, left a tiny hole, and covered the back wall in film. The result? Large, looming prints of Montreal, where dark is light, left is right, and black is white.
Glorieux photographs the most recognizable parts of Montreal: the Jacques Cartier bridge, the corner of St. Laurent and St. Catherine, and City Hall, to name a few. But the prints are anything but familiar. The reversal of light and perspective renders Montreal uncanny. It is a city of blurry edges, glass landscapes of warped funhouse mirrors, translucent wisps of passing cars, and glowing, phantasmal buildings.
The absence of life is haunting. The three-hour exposure time removes any memory of people—just vast and displaced buildings. “The result is a barren, disquieting, ghostly city. A city draped in a stellar night, its buildings lit up as if for a final celebration. Its dwellers seem to have fled in great haste leaving everything behind, even their cars. A city is frozen in time,” Glorieux describes. The snow white vistas, ominous black skies, and utter lack of vitality suggests some kind of fallout. The streets are empty, the colours are gone, and everything is backwards. It’s an apocalypse, but a beautiful one.
The exhibition treats the photos like star performers. The space is dim and the photos are illuminated by spotlights, further emphasizing Glorieux’s contrast between light and dark. Glorieux’s collection of different pinhole cameras shows how simple devices can produce beautiful things. One display holds pinhole cameras made out of a paint can, a handmade wooden box held together with Velcro, and even a cardboard box that housed fresh dates before it held camera film.
Just as the crude cameras produce stunning images, Glorieux makes art out of the city’s bleaker aspects. Many of the photos show the ugly sides of Montreal: a gaping construction pit, the Studio XXX advertisements for a peep show, and La Belle Province and its 95 cent hot dogs. These, however, are some of the best prints, with interesting perspectives and stunning contrast.
The feature piece of the show displaces viewers even more. The print is a five-metre long view of the Montreal Contemporary Art Museum, warped beyond recognition. It’s an intentional distortion made by placing the photosensitive paper on a diagonal plane, rather than one perpendicular to the pinhole. The result is anamorphosis: the disruption of perspective used by painters such as da Vinci and Holbein. The museum appears deformed from almost everywhere, but when you stand on the designated spot, the elongated mass of a building stretches into place.
Glorieux’s work is about making the familiar unfamiliar. His unique pinhole prints turn Montreal into an eerie world where very little make sense. The photos are beautiful and fascinating, and all the more so because they are so chilling.
Impressions of a City runs until May 27. Visit www.musee-mccord.qc.ca for more information.
