Bertrand Carrière

biography

Bertrand Carrière is a photographer and video artist who actively exhibits and publishes his work across Canada and in Europe. In the last 40 years, Bertrand Carrière has put together a large body of photographic work that is varied and very personal. His works can be divided in two main axes. First, there is a documentary approach that encompasses landscapes – small and vast – and portraits. Using time, memory and history, he explores stories that are bound to the land, traces of which persist to this day. Then in a second axe, he explores the intimate life around him. In a daily practice, he explores reality for its fictional potential and autobiographical echoes. All his work goes to produce images that highlight the irregularities and poetical ambiguities in the visible world.

With film and video, he explores the photographic heritage of cinema. He uses a motion picture camera to question time, stillness and movement. He also has directed two documentaries.

Bertrand received numerous awards and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and also from the Conseil des arts de Longueuil.

His works has been exhibited and published across Canada, in the United-States, in Russia, in Europe and in China. In 2005 he received le Prix de création en région from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. In 2018 he received the Prix Reconnaissance-Desjardins from the Longueuil Arts Council. He has published 7 books of his work, the latest one being Le Capteur (2015) with les Éditions du Renard. In 2020 he published Solstice photographies 1971-2019 with Plein-Sud éditions, a monograph spanning 40 years of his work.

His works can be found in many collections – both private and public: the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottawa, the National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec, the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, la Bibliothèque National de Paris, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.

He studied Graphic Communications at Collège Ahuntsic in Montreal in 1979. Carrière has an MA in Communications from the University of Quebec in Montreal in 1996. He was a photography teacher at Cégep André-Laurendeau college in Montreal from 1992 to 2017. He now teaches photography at the Université de Sherbrooke. He lives and works in Longueuil, Québec and in the Eastern Townships. Bertrand Carrière was born in Ottawa in 1957. Represented by The Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto and The Simon Blais Gallery in Montréal.

Series

Highways 10 - 20 - 55, 2023

Series| Photographer Bertrand Carrière's project is an observation of the contemporary landscape through the lens of a highway network.

London, 2019

Serie| Residency at the Quebec Studio : "On the eve of the Brexit vote, I chose to return to the streets to photograph Londoners in their immense city, at this key moment of history."

Bertrand Carrière séries

Sound Mirrors, 2019

Serie| Long walks through the fields, along the cliffs of England, in Kent and in Yorkshire, looking for the remaning sound mirrors, those vestiges of a bygone era, between 1916 and 1940.

Bertrand Carrière séries

Don’t go to Glasgow ! 2018

Serie| Back after 41 years in Glasgow, Bertrand Carrière explores identity, youth and the ties that bind us to the places we cross.

Bertrand Carrière séries

Somewhere... in the middle, 2014

Serie| Result of a residency in Loir et Cher (France): "I tried to give a word to the mute things, to what slowly seemed called to disappear. "

Bertrand Carrière séries

The Captor, 2012

Bertrand Carrière has been working for many years on the construction of a photographic journal in several volumes, where the different aspects of his production are combined and collide.

Bertrand Carrière séries

Wanderer, 2011

Series | 24 winter photographs to accompany the 24 poems by Wilhelm Müller and 24 lieder of this cycle.

Bertrand Carrière séries

After Strand, 2011

Series | Between 2010 and 2011, Bertrand Carrière travelled to the Gaspé Peninsula to the places photographed by Paul Strand. Freely inspired by the spirit of his images, he proposes his own vision of the Gaspé Peninsula nearly 80 years later.

Bertrand Carrière séries