Observatoires is a collection of recent works (both photo and video) taken during the artist’s residency at the Banff Centre. They propose poetic explorations of landscape, observe the passage of time, and trace the rhythms and cycles that govern our lives. All images, beginning at dawn and ending at nightfall, were shot in a single day at regular intervals, from two observation stations.

Observation stations

The first being the window of an elevator shaft; the video images display a slow vertical pan of the landscape, to and fro in the broken thread between earth and sky. With each ascent, the image is renewed and the landscape imperceptibly transformed following the course of the sun.

The second studio is transformed into a camera obscura. Beyond the fascination the procedure still holds for us today, it was interesting to combine it with digital technology to produce strange photography, marked by the contrast between the seemingly unchanging interior space and the mercurial landscape that was projected into it, shifting with the sun’s motion.

Claudette Lemay has been working in visual and media based works for nearly ten years. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions both nationally (Québec, Ontario, New Brunswick) as well as internationally (Mexico and France). Her single-channel work has also appeared in many international festivals, including Festival du film l’art (Montréal), ISEA (Japan), Impakt (Netherlands). She is a member of Perte de Signal and Cooperative Lezarts. Born in Quebec City, she now lives and works in Montreal.