Alain Pratte (2003)

“Bits of negative were stuffed into a jar in a junk store in my neighbourhood. What did they show? Something else. Upon closer inspection I realized that I was looking at real documentary photos—judicial photos even. Images clearly not intended for publication, they must have been used as police evidence, or to fill out insurance files, or buttress legal arguments. Because they don’t correspond to the usual aesthetic criteria of photojournalism, because they were not meant to record an ongoing event in accordance with some long-established narrative structure, these images heighten photography’s evocative power.”

Born in 1953 in Shawinigan, Quebec. Lives and works in Montreal.

Since 1973, Alain Pratte has been practising a form of documentary photography that has affinities with both literature and cinema. Each of his projects is, in fact, constructed somewhat in the manner of a film—which is to say that they refer as much to the construction of the mind as they do to the reality of the world. Pratte’s interest in documentary photography has quite naturally led him to the cinema, and he has participated in a number of documentary films.

Occurrence, espace d’art et d’essai contemporains
5455 Avenue de Gaspé #108
(514) 907-4535
Exhibition hours : du mercredi au samedi de 12 h à 17 h
From September 6 to October 18, 2003
Opening: September 6, 2003 at 3pm