Milan Cathedral entrance, Milan, Italy. All rights reserved, Gaétan Charbonneau ©

I have just started offering new set of PRINTS for sale in different choice of formats, on greeting cards, framed prints , and last but not the least, on Acrylic prints.  The image gets printed directly onto the back of a 1/4″ thick sheet of clear acrylic, and the result is absolutely stunning. Prices are extremely affordable for this type of presentation and should be ideal for hotels,  corporate office buildings, etc, etc. More work will be presented in the upcoming year.

Adios all!

3 button intercom, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. All rights reserved, Gaétan Charbonneau © /Millennium Images.

For street photographers, the exploration of new surroundings does not stop to exotic places and big city structures. It goes well beyond the decor and  always reach the line of cultural differences when it’s time to press the shutter. Of course each photographer will have it’s own approach, some are less “in your face” than others in their own body language and image making tactic, and that’s the part A of the equation. Part B is the interaction with the locals and their attitude towards photography. In my traveling experience, the southern of the hemisphere I went, the more the people were acutely “aware” of their immediate surroundings. Some clearly overreacted, and some other people were down right paranoid in regards to the motive of my photographic ventures. In some cases the explanation  that I was an artist just didn’t cut it… and I must admit that explaining why I took a photo of an intercom (at night) can sometime raise eyebrows.

In some of the places I went, I could sit on the sidewalk to take a picture and most would barely noticed, each going his own way as if sitting on the sidewalk was perfectly acceptable. Eye contact also varied greatly from one place to another. In Spain for instance, I felt that madrileños responded in keeping eye contact a lot longer than most of the other places I went, and much longer than the eye contact I can have in my own native town, Montreal where the contact is a lot shorter and less direct, in the context of street photography. In the end it’s always intriguing to see what can be attributed to the size of the city, to the culture, and to the photographer attitude. All the spices that makes street photography one of the most interesting way of seeing the world.

Adios all!

The Mirror, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. All rights reserved, Gaétan Charbonneau © /Millennium Images.

Yesterday I picked up the magazine where this image actually appear, Tricycle/The buddhist review, winter 2010. On these occasions I always have flashes of the state of mind I was in when I created the image.  Sure enough the tittle of the article  is “Mind like a Mirror/ The shimmering reflections of consciousness“, written by Andrew Glendzki.

I recall that at the time I was literally driving with mirrors in the back of my car, not quite sure how I would craft my final ideas. It didn’t pop up immediately, I had mirrors on the grass, under my harms, pieces of mirrors broken on the sidewalk and a couple of other concepts. The only thing that kept me searching for an idea I could be happy with, was my habit of printing my work, and looking at my prints side by side. It was the continuity, the flow of my mind looking for something, but not quite getting there that I could see on these prints. The only thing I could understand clearly was that I was getting closer with every picture, hence the final idea that appear here (model Brandon Queen holding the mirror).

That is precisely the point with editing. Of course it is to select the so-called final image(s), but it is above everything else, to see hints and traces of the future work that will take form. This method make sense for me, even (especially!) in an age where computer screens are taking away so much of our attention. Who knows, working this way might even be a revelation for those who never tried it out, a bit like having a shimmering reflections of consciousness… !

Adios all!

Le Boulingrin, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. All rights reserved, Gaétan Charbonneau ©/Getty Images.

I was looking at this image recently, and I went along thinking about the decisive moment, the concept elaborated by Henri-Cartier Bresson, a pioneer in the history of photography, one of the greatest photographer of our time.

This notion is embedded with a number of interesting nuances. The first thing that comes to my mind is the fact that there is a very fine line between the decisive moment and what I would call the expected moment. If one stand on a street corner with a well composed visual background and wait for an interesting silhouette, perfectly profiled to fit a predetermined space, does this stand for a decisive moment, or does it become more of a expected moment?

The idea of the decisive moment has been explored long and large, and could be ready to morph into higher grounds. For the sake of clarity, how can we describe a more precise notion of the decisive moment, while remaining faithful to the initial principle that something can never happen twice in the exact same way? How about the unexpected moment? Something that would distinguish planned imagery disguised as being something related to the decisive moment. Of course there is nothing wrong with that, what’s unclear is tagging a concept for something else, stretching the definition just a bit too far to remain true to the principle.

So, from now on, let’s reach for this ever elusive unexpected moment, just like this great image that went so  fast in front of my eyes, and that I missed last weekend…

Adios all!

-architonic.com

-coolhunting.com

-core77.com

-davidreport.com

-designboom.com

-designobserver.com

-dexigner.com

-mocoloco.com

-sightunseen.com

-yatzer.com

Mocoloco is readable from left to right and just for that they deserve an honorable mention, and Mocoloco it’s such a catchy name. All are very cool sites.

Adios all!

Jonathan Franzen/Freiheit, published by Rowohlt. Image by Gaétan Charbonneau ©/Millennium Images.

Since I have been licensing my fine art images for book covers for as long as I can remember, I have always pointed out that in graphic design, less IS more.

I had a recent discussion with a graphic designer group on the Net, where I pointed how important the notion of “restraint” was. That keeping things simple was in the vast majority of cases, a much better option over using a ton of  graphic elements piled on top of one another, with sometimes, overly busy and unfortunate typo usages.  In fact, the only question to ask is: are all those graphic elements crucial to the jacket design?

If the response is NO, eliminating all the unnecessary will greatly simplify the reading of the cover, while making it at the same time a lot more punchy, something that is not a luxury once the book is seen on the Amazon.com Web page tiny thumbnails.  This jacket cover with an image of mine is the closest thing relating to a perfect book cover, and  one can hardly ask for more.

Simply put, this jacket is a poster child for effective book cover design.

Adios all!

The Subterranean, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. All rights reserved, Gaétan Charbonneau ©

Is Art now mostly created by the viewing context?

It is interesting to think about the criteria used to define an image as a work of art, or not. The continuous flow of images distributed over the internet has given me opportunity to reflect on this. What if a work of art was now simply the consequence of it’s viewing context?

Has anybody felt slightly uncomfortable seeing the image of a child dying from starvation, beautifully printed on chromogenic paper, framed and matted in a art show? Is this image of a dying child a true work of art?

I have seen images in art galleries that were both technically and aesthetically inferior to some of the images I have seen in specialized contemporary stock agency. If for example, the shinny close-up of a mouth, printed on glossy paper and delivered in the mail was instead framed and exhibited in a high profile museum, would this image be redefined as a work of art? Would it be better than some art in the museum own collection? In other words, can the same image be redefined based on where it is viewed? I guess so. It is therefore the intention behind the usage, and the viewing context that will create the work of art, not the image itself.

The notion of discovery will gradually become obsolete based on the instantaneous nature of the internet, making it impossible to determine who did what, first. It is quite possible that the criteria defining a work of art has completely changed, now more than ever, and that the existing remains of the19th century conception of a work of art is being challenged to become a thing of the past, once and for all.

Adios all

CANADIAN POETRY 1920 to 1960.

Edited by Brian Trehearne, published by McClelland & Steward Ltd, cover design by CS Richardson.  Image: Gaétan Charbonneau ©

When less is more, in graphic design.

I just did this book cover with one of my Black & White image, CANADIAN POETRY 1920 – 1960, from Brian Trehearne, published by McClelland & Steward Ltd, cover design by CS Richardson.

I first saw the book on display this week while looking for something else, a bit by accident. From a distance, the simplicity of the design was what attracted my attention in the first place.

Who said Black & White doesn’t sell anymore? That for the sake of convenience it is better to shoot in color since an eventual customer interested in licensing the image could simply strip out the color information? Book designers are a busy bunch. Always on the rush, I am not sure they have the time to imagine how a color image can translate into a monochrome, they need to see what they need on the lightbox, and the sooner the better.

From my perspective, it’s an entirely different story to go out with a digital camera knowing that no matter the subject, color information can always be stripped out, rather then using a camera with B & W films. On these occasions the mind sets in, and it then becomes possible to visualized the world in B & W on a level difficult to achieve otherwise.

Adios all

Homme et son soulier, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. All rights reserved, Gaétan Charbonneau ©

I’ve always been intrigued by the standard notion of “street photography”.

It’s one thing to adhere to that definition, and it’s quite another to find a personal style within the specific set of rules that constitute that definition. I had numerous “existential crisis” around the act of fitting inside the street photography notion until I had reached a relative peace of mind.

While there is clearly a sense of the decisive moment in every street photographers work, (a notion first pioneered by Henri-Cartier Bresson), I often find myself questioning the known boundaries of the street photography movement in a way that would still allow me to take advantage of its aesthetics strongest points.

Technique has obvious impact on the working mechanic of the movement and I recently managed to depart from traditional 35mm format cameras to see what would bring a bigger format in adding a 6 x 4.5 medium format camera to my arsenal. I saw that it clearly brought a more contemplative dimension to my work, since larger formats tends to slow everything down.

Another aspect that I often question is the location. What constitutes the street, in terms of territory from a pictorial point of view? Can a rural, non/asphalted location be considered “street photography”, and if not, why exactly? How pre-fabricated  (urban) the location must be to tag an image “street photography”? How big the city must be in order to engineer street photography imagery? Is it possible to come up with that type of imagery in a village? With a forest in the background?  These are relatively mundane questions at first, but upon further inspection questions like these remain important to ask for anyone interested in street photography and it’s place within the history of photography.

Doing street photography is one thing, and liking it is easy, but to find a personal vision within the traditional context of the definition is quite another thing that requires a massive amount of dedication.

Adios all!

Adios all!