Alain Lefort
in Matapedia
EXHIBITION
Horizon (alt.14m)
Alain Lefort, Montreal, Québec | alainlefortphoto.format.com
“The horizon line is almost inseparable from the very essence of the landscape, since it demarcates, shares and organizes what one sees. It encodes the image and influences our reading of the image, depending where that line is found in a composition.
“I approach landscape as a production that calls on the imaginary and that I construct based on the experience of moving about in an undefined space. The resulting work becomes a track, a projection of a possible world; an amalgam indivisible from an objective imprint and from a fiction. Through the fragmentation obtained by the multitude of shots taken, the landscape here is an accumulation concentrated in time and in space.
“One can look for the expanse that hugs empty space while watching the horizon disappear in the fog, in an environment where land and sea find themselves absorbed in each other through a constant mist, in suspension. Or feel the cutting, the groundswell that shares the worlds, that line that delimits and isolates the various masses, be they solid, liquid or gaseous. No matter its form, without a horizon one sets out to find the emptiness; and our eye, lacking a point of reference, seeks a landmark to cling to.
“As for Horizon (alt.14m), it’s that beam of light that crosses the region and that shares the mountain river, that caught my eye. During a residency that lasted a few months in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, that line would appear in a random way, taken hostage by an ordinary natural phenomenon; often present when I didn’t have my material and sometimes invisible to others when I pointed to it with my finger – a sort of apparition, for river regulars a brief and insignificant passing-through. That split in the image allows the river’s material density to have its rightful place. The sediment-filled water buffeted by the currents of high tide seems to pull down on the landscape. The mountains of Charlevoix are fragile, laid down on a restless river, protected by that line of light.” – Alain Lefort
Work produced during the Est-Nord-Est residency, fall 2021
Exhibition at Rencontres
Horizon (alt.14m)
Alain Lefort lives and works in Montreal. He has more than twenty years of professional experience in photography. Since 1995, he has held various positions in the field: professional photographer, professional artist in visual arts, teacher, and technician specializing in darkroom printing, as well as assisting numerous Montreal-based and foreign photographers. He holds a master’s degree in visual and media arts from Université du Québec à Montréal and a major in photography from Concordia University.
As a professional artist, he has been showing his work regularly since the beginning of the 1990s. He has more than fifty individual and collective exhibitions to his credit in Québec, elsewhere in Canada and abroad. His work has been acquired by Cirque du Soleil, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Loto-Québec, the Conseil des arts de la ville de Montréal and UMA (The House of Image and Photography). It also been the subject of numerous articles and publications.