Portraits and Travels

When I started taking photos, I believed light did not matter; it was only a means to capture on negatives the visuals I sought. A photograph was an idea, a concept, something that I sketched beforehand and set about bringing to life through mise en scène.

In a studio, light is what gives life to your images. After working extensively inside one shooting the Tarot series, I felt the need to tackle a more naturalistic genre of photography and put to use what I’d learned about light.

I was 33 years old. Now was the time to go on a big adventure. In 1995, I decided to quit my studio job. That part of my life was over. I emptied my bank account, rented out my apartment and left Canada to go backpacking in India.

On other trips, I always brought a couple of cameras and a lot of lens. Going to India was an opportunity to tackle photographing people and places in natural light settings. I took only one camera body and one lens (a 28 mm). I wanted freedom from technique.

First thing I noticed upon arriving in India was the air, which was filled with dust, diffusing the light and giving it a nice glow. Here, the sun’s arch was lower, casting beautiful stretched shadows, backlighting buildings and people.

Back at University, a photography teacher kept urging us to get close to our subjects; that the distance between the model and the photographer emphasized how we sometimes fear to cross into the personal space of another. By being too far from your subject, depth of perception cannot be attained. Deliberately choosing to bring a single wide-angle lens to India left me no choice; I had to get close to the people I wanted and I relished the challenge.

To make good pictures, Henri Cartier-Bresson stated that one only needs a lens and a body.
Cartier-Bresson is also known for the expression “ the decisive moment ”, that instant where instinct
and experience merge at the click of a shutter.

People always talk about the shock of another culture. In India, I truly felt at home. With cows walking about in the streets, ancient architecture everywhere, one black and white television set for fifteen people, everything seemed from another time, as if travelling back to the forties and fifties. It was wonderful. What shocked me was how much I enjoyed photographing people and places. Everywhere I looked I saw beauty. Okay, sometimes it was harsh, but photographer Joel-Peter Witkin showed me that profound spiritual beauty is also found in the darker aspects of life. That Sheshama, a leper in India, had the most beautiful face I have ever seen.

From that point on, I have never used more than a camera and two lens. Upon my return form India, I stopped freelancing. I got a job in a professional photo lab and devoted my free time to shooting my own images. I went back to India in 2000 and also visited Mexico (1998), Morocco (2002), Egypt (2001) and France (2000 and 2003).