The stream of day-to-day

On our living room walls we have three framed photographs by Raymond Aubin, a one time colleague of Chris' at Nortel. Since 2008, Raymond's work has become more experimental. He has an exhibition of his more recent work running at the Ottawa City Hall until November 17th, and you can pick up a leaflet about the show if you go to see it, explaining that

Aubin is interested in public places and the ways in which we connect to them. He sees organized chaos within them, where the unfamiliar overlaps with the familiar.

An image from Au jour le jour, by Raymond Aubin

Because this notion of juxtaposing the familiar with the unfamiliar appeals to me, I went to hear him give a public lecture about it last weekend. His exhibits are images reproduced on vinyl: selected photographs of webcam shots taken by a webcam (Earthcam) positioned above Times Square, New York. At any moment of the day or night, a viewer, from anywhere in the world, is able to look at Times Square from different angles, zoom in and pan the camera (click on the symbols in the bottom left corner of the virtual screen) and this fascinates Raymond, as does the way the colours of the scene change through the changing seasons, even in this urban environment. Of 7500 momentary images he captures from the continuous display, Raymond keeps about 320, then from these he carefully and deliberately selects perhaps eight pictures, invariably rather blurred but having an interesting composition, and aligns them along a scroll-like strip. He says he's influenced by ancient Chinese art that tells stories by means of paintings on a scroll. As for the subject matter, "I look for strange situations," he says, and adds that he has no difficulty in finding them, every hour, every day, asking himself, "What breaks the stream of day-to-day?"

On his website, Raymond puts it this way:

Comme artiste, j’explore la phénoménologie du quotidien dans les lieux publics. Je m’intéresse à leur désordre organisé. Je suis attentif à l’interstice entre l’ordinaire et l’étrange. Je travaille la plasticité de la photographie et sa mise en espace.

During the lecture he told us that his preference for a long, thin picture format, where the normal rules of composition do not apply, was influenced by photographers like Geoffery James whose Utopia/Dystopia * was shown at the National Gallery in 2008.

Raymond's exhibition

Raymond Aubin explore les lieux de passage au moyen du panorama photographique de 360°. Par l’entremise de la photographie, du photomontage, de la vidéo et de l’installation, il cherche la vérité dans le banal, le quotidien, le commun. Ainsi, l’artiste s’est intéressé aux aérogares, aux gares routières, aux stations de métro, aux corridors, aux esplanades, aux squares et aux parcs urbains. Trois caractéristiques de ces lieux l’ont particulièrement interpelé : la paradoxale solitude dans la foule, la fugacité des évènements et la normalisation des déplacements et des échanges...

(levadrouilleururbain.wordpress.com) 

I'll have to go to see this collection of images, Tracanage, if I can, because I like what Raymond does and his latest theme means a lot to me; I can identify with la solitude dans la foule and habitually imagine myself in transit, especially at the moment (as my previous blogpost testifies). We're all in perpetual transit, actually, but some more obviously than others. The exhibition is about to be presented at the Maison de la Culture in Gatineau (from January to March).

In our house we have three "early" photos by this versatile artist who is a former colleague of my husband's. One of these is the "landscape" of a woman's bare hip, one is of an ancient stone doorway in Yemen and the other captures a happy moment for four children in the highlands of Madagascar.