Mois De La Photo in Montreal 2011 — First Impressions

This Sat­ur­day I spent about 3–4 hours going to dif­fer­ent exhi­bi­tions that make up Mois De La Photo (Photo Month) in Mon­treal. I’m not fond of writ­ing about things I don’t like, I MUCH pre­fer to select a few things that I do like and write about those.

I was dis­ap­pointed in the work that I saw over­all. I saw about 8–10 exhi­bi­tions and I won’t name them. It wasn’t because the work was bad or any­thing, it just was not my cup of tea. Almost every­thing I saw was dark-themed, abstract, overly-intellectualized, and WAY too exper­i­men­tal imo. I have noth­ing against exper­i­men­tal, but imag­ine if 99% of every­thing you heard at the Mon­treal Jazz fest was experimental.…it would suck for most peo­ple. Peo­ple expect fes­ti­vals that they go to, to some­what rep­re­sent their idea of what the fes­ti­val is about. Of the 8 Exhi­bi­tions, 3 of them had videos…Video is not pho­tog­ra­phy. I DO have an open mind BTW; I guess I just would have liked even a teeny rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the work that I saw to be sim­i­lar to the fine art pho­tog­ra­phy that I like to see.

So at the end of the day, I guess my issue is with the Title, “Mois de la photo”. Such a con­ven­tional title, it makes you think you will be see­ing ‘some’ con­ven­tional pho­tog­ra­phy. You will not (as far as I can tell from my sam­ple). I’d much rather they title the thing Exper­i­men­tal photo Month.

Of the 8 exhi­bi­tions I saw, the only one I liked a bit was The Dead by Jack Bur­man. Large prints of dead peo­ple pre­served in formalde­hyde. Not try­ing to be face­tious here, but Burman’s exhi­bi­tion was one of the most con­crete, and “acces­si­ble” ones. You know full well what you are look­ing at.