Photographic art: "Minganie".
Artist: Jean-Thomas Bédard.
2021, Mingan Archipelago, Quebec, Canada.
This work is part of the Géographie variable series, begun in 2021, which redefines the aesthetics of the geographical space of the St. Lawrence coastline and its sumptuous islands.
The series won a Silver Award at the New-York Photography Awards 2021, in the Professional - Fine Art Photography category, and a Gold Award at the London Photography Awards 2022, in the Fine Art - Nature category.
Theme: Nature, : micro landscape, rock, low tide, shore, seashore, littoral, St. Lawrence River, St. Lawrence Estuary, foreshore, flats.
Technique: Digital composition from photo fusion.
Original size: 36 x 24 inches
Reproduction format: 18 x 12 inches / 45.72 x 30 x 48 cm, 24 x 16 inches / 60.96 cm x 40.64 cm and 36 x 24 inches / 91.44 x 60.96 cm.
Dominant colors: Grey, beige, brown, red.
Hanging system included:
Floating frame
Artist's interpretation of the work:
Minganie is a tribute to the maritime territory of the Mingan Archipelago on the North Shore, also known as Minganie. It explores the potential for metamorphosis and the metaphorical power of the photographic image reworked with digital tools. This composition invites us on a pictorial journey, experimenting with a reinvented space that evokes the mysteries of the territory of the Mingan Islands on the North Shore, based on photographed images of its rich winged fauna.
Minganie - Jean-Thomas Bédard
As an artist and committed environmentalist, Bédard creates exclusively with materials from nature, exploring the variables of an intimate geography that feeds on his sense of belonging to the territory.
For the past decade, he has traveled the shores of the St. Lawrence and its estuary, an emblematic place par excellence that has nourished the Quebecois imagination, to capture its essence. Using the shapes and textures captured on his coastline, the artist-photographer creates imaginary spaces, a kind of metaphor for the ties that humans maintain with their territory.
His work is divided into several series, each characterized by an original visual treatment. They evolve from micro-landscapes to digital collages evoking totemic figures or primitive deities, then turn to the fusion of several images to create a surreal or symbolic world. His vision is poetic and holistic, and his practice seeks to build bridges between nature and humanity. He invites us to transform our gaze from the narrative of human domination over nature to that of a collaborative nature of which human beings are as much a part as all other living beings.