Bertrand Carrière in Petite-Vallée
EXHIBITION
Sound Mirrors
Bertrand Carrière, Longueuil (Québec) | bertrandcarriere.com
Along the cliffs of England, in Kent and in Yorkshire, there remains a series of sound mirrors, vestiges of a bygone era, between 1916 and 1940. Early in the twentieth century, during the First World War, the British military invented a listening device as an early warning system. The sound mirrors were made to listen to the sky, to alert cities to incoming bombers. These big ears, still standing, have become something between military apparatus, scientific objects and brutalist sculptures. Only a few of these structures remain. But in these times of Brexit they take on an ironic meaning, as the UK turns a deaf ear to Europe. These pictures were made between July and October 2020, during my residency at the Québec Studio in London of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ).
Exhibition at Rencontres
Sound Mirrors
In the last 40 years, Bertrand Carrière has produced a body of photographic work that is both personal and varied. His research includes both landscapes and portraits as means of sounding memory and the history of places. From this research, images emerge that endeavor to give a voice to silent things, to those that are disappearing. Whether it be on walls, in a public space or in books, his work unfolds in series where narrative relations and links that develop between images find expression.
Bertrand Carrière is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ). His work has been exhibited in Québec, elsewhere in Canada, in Europe and in China. In 2005 he received the Prix de la création en region awarded by CALQ for the Montérégie region. In 2018 he received the Prix Reconnaissance Desjardins from the Conseil des arts de Longueuil. He was artist in residence at CALQ’s Québec Studio in London in 2019, where the Sound Mirrors series was part of his work carried out.
A number of books containing his photographs have been published, including Dieppe: Landscapes and Installations (Les 400 coups, 2006) and Le Capteur (Éditions du Renard, 2015). In 2011, the Musée régional de Rimouski exhibited his series After Strand and devoted a catalogue to him. In 2020 he published Solstice, a monograph spanning 40 years of his work with Éditions Plein-Sud. His photographs are featured in numerous public and private collections.
Bertrand Carrière holds a master’s degree in communications from Université du Québec à Montréal (1996). He has taught photography at Cégep André-Laurendeau and Cégep du Vieux-Montréal, and now teaches at Université de Sherbrooke.
His work is represented in Montreal by Galerie Simon Blais, in Toronto by the Stephen Bulger Gallery and in Paris by Agence VU’. Born in Ottawa in 1957, he lives and works in Longueuil and the Eastern Townships, Québec.