Isabelle Hayeur scrutinises the land to understand how today’s society occupies and shapes the environment. Through the manipulation of images and landscapes in her large-format photographs, videos and in situ installations she tries to demonstrate the decisive effect of the prodigious transformation of natural, rural and urban spaces. In this monograph, the critic and independent curator Marie Perrault takes a penetrating look at Hayeur’s photography and video through analysis of a few key works and a discussion of her ecological, urban and social concerns.

Lynne Cohen’s work is characterized by its depiction of public and semi-private spaces and workplaces defined by their neutrality and the absence of human figures. Her formal approach has become influential on the international scene.

For over thirty years, Donigan Cumming explored the social and ethical implications of the observational image with an “improvised community” of apparently marginal Montreal figures to unsettling effect. His work constitutes an ongoing analysis of the manufactured naturalism of social documentary photography and the subjects it purports to witness and describe. Rooted in the photographic image, his work spans various media from video and installation to drawing and collage.

Personal archives and the conditions in which materials are preserved in museums have greatly inspired Patrick Altman, who explores the role of photography in the collective memory, putting archival documents to new use to create different ways of reading them. His work is an emblematic extension of the search for meaning that has been a driving force for a significant generation of artists.

Bettina Hoffmann joins installation, photography and video to stage frozen characters whose relations and identities are ambiguous. Her work is emblematic of the multi-faceted nature of recent image practices which, in their search for meaning by way of recurring themes, explore every possible means for putting these themes into images.

At times moving and at others shocking, yet always fascinating, the work of Evergon stands out for the way in which it plumbs the depths of gay male identity free of all taboos. Evergon’s art, always rooted in photography, makes use of every possible technique with such impunity that he has created various alter egos for himself in order to crystallise the many facets of his personality.