Bangladeshi photographer Munem Wasif took the photography world by storm last year, staging a solo exhibition at the prestigious Visa Pour l'Image festival and winning a commission from WaterAid, after reaching the final of the Prix Pictet prize.
His WaterAid pics are going on show in London soon, but in the meantime, he's staging an exhibition at Chobi Mela, Bangladesh's huge festival of photojournalism. Wasif's images of the Bangladeshi jute industry go on show at Kalpana Boarding, Shahkhari Bazaar on 03 February, and his images are just one of many reasons to attend the event. With over sixty exhibitions, 35 participating nations and conferences and workshops including luminaries such as Stuart Hall and Noam Chomsky, Chobi Mela puts Bangladesh firmly on the photography map.

Poster for Mois de la Photo, image @ Kutlug Ataman.

Montreal's 2009 Mois de la Photo opens later this evening at the Canadian Center for Architecture. The eleventh Mois de la Photo is curated by Gaelle Morel and features work by 24 artists, spread over 11 venues across the city.

This year, Morel has chosen the theme The Spaces of the Image, investigating the ways in which artists working with photography choose to exhibit their work. Canadian photographer Robert Burley has created a trompe d'oeil on the front of the CCA, for example, while Emmanuelle Leonard is exhibiting a series of photographs of people at work, the dimensions of which represent the number of Canadians employed in that sector. International photographers showing work at the festival include Alfredo Jaar and Yang Zhenzhong, and Kutlug Ataman is exhibiting a video piece.

'Due to the range of possibilities - the technical diversity of film and digital cameras, formats, printing procedures, and the many alternatives offered in terms of museography and occupation of space - photographers are increasingly called upon to become aware of their relationship with the exhibition,' writes Morel. 'Production methods and viewing modalities, as integral parts of projects, exert a direct influence on the aesthetic of images.'

More stories and interviews from the festival to come, so keep posted on the blog.

Michael Flomen, Blue Flyer II at Le Mois de La Photo. Photo © Carlos and Jason Sanchez.

Gaelle Morel is a French curator and art historian based in Toronto, and the first non-Canadian curator of Le Mois de la Photo a Montreal. She opted to investigate ‘The Spaces of the Image’, the ways in which image are presented in exhibition. 'While the processes that go into the making of the artwork are generally subjected to painstaking study, the technical side of images and the situations they are used are often ignored - they are likely to be deemed too prosaic,' she writes in her essay in the festival catalogue. 'These installation processes must be seen, however, as one of the essential keys to reading many photographic, video, and media arts projects presented in recent years.' Diane Smyth caught up with her at the opening of Le Mois de la Photo.

DS: What's the concept behind the festival?

GM: When you go to a photo show, often what you see is black-and-white, framed pictures on the wall. That’s great but it’s just a convention, it doesn’t have to be that way. There are many artists who have thought about it and worked in a very different way, and I thought it was good timing to throw a spotlight on some of them. We tried to show work that hasn’t been shown in Canada before, although for example Pierre Tremblay showed his work [a stop-motion image of his daughter] in the Nuits Blanches in Toronto. If it was good, I wanted to show it.

DS: Three of the artists are showing work that goes outside the museum or gallery, could you explain how they fit into the concept?

GM: When you’re dealing with sceneography and trying to open doors, you very quickly go outdoors. This is is a festival so it has to be very open. It has to be coherent and demanding, but it also has to be open to the public. It can be hard for people to say "Let's go to an exhibition" so I wanted to find ways to bring work out.

Robert Burley's image is of a giant Polaroid, opened up to show the positive and negative image, and it's on the side of the Canadian Centre for Architecture. He's using a very new technology developed in advertising, in which images are bonded directly to surfaces without damaging them. It was a great opportunity to try something new, using new technology. Anne Ramsden has created a series of posters, using images from Flickr, that supposedly advertise The Museum of the Everyday, an imaginary museum. These posters have been put all over Montreal, so you don't know when you'll come across them or even that they're an art work. And Le Mois de la Photo always uses a couple of billboards, so Michael Flomen was able to utilise them.

We also have lots of exhibitions where people have to touch or blow the images, or have turn in the space to understand them. It means that they’re really part of the show and I hope it means they feel committed, and feel part of the work. Because really without an audience, there is no work. That doesn't mean we have to dumb down, all the work has to be good, but we have to make sure we're sharing something with the public.

DS: A few of the exhibitions consider photojournalism and how it's disseminated - Alfredo Jaar is showing a video piece about Kevin Carter's shot of a Sudanese famine victim, for example, while Pascal Convert has made a wax sculpture based on Hocine Zaourar's shot of a weeping Palestinian woman. Are you commenting on photojournalism?

GM: Photojournalism is the main way for photographs to be distributed, so it’s the way people usually see it. The artists who use photojournalism are concerned with how the photograph was taken, when and how, and what the discourses on it were. They're asking "Are we ok with photojournalism" but also "Are we ok with it if photojournalism disappears?" because photojournalism is facing challenges now. New technologies mean that photojournalists will probably have to imagine new ways of working, so it’s a good time to consider what it is and what it might become.

DS: Did you consider using work which uses new technology to distribute images in new ways?

GM: I was open to everything but if you work online it's difficult to show works to the public, plus we have regular exhibition venues here. But it would be wonderful to do more with that in future. It would be fantastic to experiment and create new kinds of venues - there’s a whole path in front of us, we don’t even know what we’re capable of with these new devices.

Chuck Samuels, director general of Le Mois de la Photo a Montreal (holding microphone) with photographer Robert Burley (speaking), in front of Burley's installation at the opening of the festival. Image © Diane Smyth.

The cost of living in Montreal used to be so cheap that artists need only get one show and a couple of commissions a year to survive, says Chuck Samuels, director general of Le Mois de la Photo.

These enviable economic conditions lead to a distinctive art scene in the city, he told Diane Smyth at the festival opening, in which artists step back from the market to consider what art is and what it does. 'Many artists are doing work here that has little regard for the market, that reflects and self-references. That's a real force, and that idea of thinking about art and how it works feeds into Le Mois de la Photo. We are interested in themes that question how photography works or doesn't work rather than a subject such as, for example, 'sports'. That's unlikely to be a theme we would do.'

The first Le Mois de la Photo a Montreal took place in 1989 and was set up by a local artist-run centre, Vox. At that time, said Samuels, the organisers felt photography was under-represented in contemporary art galleries, so they drew on Houston Fotofest and Le Mois de la Photo in Paris to both defend and celebrate photographic art. Since then photography has become a well-established strand in contemporary art but the festival has remained, evolving over time into the guest-curated, strongly themed event it is today.

'It was such a huge success [over the 1990s] that the organisers decided to dispense with the general exhibitions and have one very coherent central theme, organised by a guest curator and supported by a colloquium and publication,' said Samuels. 'They introduced that in 2003, with a festival arranged around the theme of 'NOW. Images of Present Time'. It included work by Paul Seawright and Alison Jackson and looked at contemporary issues, issues usually covered by photojournalists. I came on board in 2002.'

The board of directors does a call for submissions from curators, and this year selected a non-Canadian for the first time since it imposed the single-theme concept, French-born Gaelle Morel. The curators are expected to bring a strong central concept and an idea of the photographers they would like to include, but once accepted, have a year to research exactly which exhibitions they would like to include. Photographers are also invited to submit proposals, and this year's theme, 'The Spaces of the Image' attracted over 400 submissions from all over the world and Morel has included artists from as far away as Chile and the Congo, so check Le Mois de la Photo or BJP websites for more information on the next call for submissions. Or, failing that, move to Montreal and get involved in an exceptional artistic scene.

'Artists and the people who frequent cultural events in Montreal really feel that the events belong to them and they belong to the events,' says Samuels. 'There are a lot of artist-run events and galleries, it's unlike elsewhere.'

Entrance to Alfredo Jaar's The Sound of Silence video booth.

Alfredo Jaar was born in Chile, and now lives and works in New York. His work considers the divide between the developed and developing worlds, calling into question the visual strategies used by the West to portray other countries. At Le Mois de la Photo he is presenting a video projection booth called The Sound of Silence, which relates the story of Kevin Carter's image of an infant Sudanese famine victim, who is dwarfed by a large and menacing vulture. Carter won the Pulitzer Prize for the image in 1994, but committed suicide just a few months afterwards. DS Diane Smyth, AJ Alfredo Jaar.

DS How does this piece fit into the rest of your work?

AJ It is right at the heart of what I do. I have been working for 30 years on the politics of images and issues of representation and so I think this piece is really at the root of my concerns for a long time. This work seem to have captured the audience’s imagination – this is its 10th presentation. It hasn’t stopped touring around the world, it is going to the Moscow Biennale next week and then to Japan in November, here it is in French and we’ve also done it in Italian.

DS What do you hope to do with this work?

AJ I am an architect, I never trained in art, I consider myself an architect making art, I use the methodology of the architect – I give myself a programme for each work that I make. One of the fundamental points about this work is communication. I want to make people think about these representations, so it’s very important for me to create work that has different levels, differents points of entry. All my work has many layers – some people will enter the work at a basic level, others will enter at a deeper level, but hopefully they will all be able to connect with the work.

I’m practically on an impossible mission, but I think it’s very important to try to get people to question images. We’ve been taught how to read and write but no one has ever taught us how to look at images. We don’t understand the language of images, we think they’re innocent and that we can read them easily, but no, we don’t. We are bombarded by images and these images are not innocent. They are out there in the world, and most of them exist to sell us something, whether it’s products or ideas. Their messages influences our vision of the world, they are our vision of the world. We are surrounded by a landscape of images we don’t know how to read. This work is a theatre built for a single image, and a model of thinking about an image, and that might suggest that all images should be thought about.

DS Why did you choose to work with this particular image?

AJ It was published in 1993 and when I saw it, I was shocked. It is maybe the most extraordinary image ever created in terms of articulating the widening gap between different worlds – between the so-called developed world and the so-called developing world. Kevin’s image captures so many things, including the criminal indifference of the developed world. That is why it provoked so many reactions when it was published, because it really goes to the essence of what’s happening with the imbalance that exists in the world.

DS Why do you produce this kind of work?

AJ I’ve been travelling pretty much nonstop since I was a kid, I’ve seen probably more than 100 countries. I have seen a lot of the world and it is clear to me that the world you and I live in is almost a work of fiction compared to the rest of the world. We are here dressed up, wearing shoes, we have access to food and entertainment and technology, it all seems so normal but this is not normal in the world at large. There have been extremely interesting developments in the world of technology such as the internet, but still 50% of the world population doesn’t have access to a telephone. When you’re aware of those gaps, of those dire imbalances, you have to do something about it. As an artist I am in the fortunate position of being given space to think about this, to think about society, and for me that is an incredible privilege, and it comes with a responsibility to think about the world. It is part of what I have to do, there’s no other way to say it.

Circle of Confusion by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, on show at Le Mois de la Photo a Montreal.

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige are showing one piece in Le Mois de la Photo a Montreal - a large, fragmented image of Beirut that viewers are invited to scatter - but the gallery in which it's being shown, Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, has taken the opportunity to show a much larger collection of their work. I am here even if you don't see me includes a video documentary about a stolen, censored film, a half-eroded video from Joreige's disappeared uncle, photographs of decomposing posters of martyrs and war heroes taken around the Lebanon, and seemingly-straightup shots of weaponry, as well as other pieces. Their work explores the use of imagery in the Lebanon, and the ways in which images both illuminate and contribute to the country's complex political situation.

'We became interested in photography and video during the war because of the use of images by different media,' Joreige explains to BJP. 'We were trying to think about our own relation to images - whether we can believe in them, and whether we can grab something of our own presence.'

That's why The Circle of Confusion, the image shown at Le Mois de la Photo, divides Beirut into 3000 moveable pieces. Viewers can move the pieces around or remove them altogether, destroying, rebuilding and falsifying the city and illustrating how poorly and partially documented it is. That's also why the duo photograph posters of dead heroes, whose individual features have worn away over time, and why Le Film Perdu shows clips from the Lebanese media and local photographers as well as the short takes ironically rescued from their stolen footage by the censors. 'We’re not a country without images, we’re a country that produces a lot of images,' says Hadjithomas. 'We had a lot of television channels during and after the war but what these images were showing was politically telling.

'You cannot make images or film without thinking about the other images that have been produced, especially in a country like the Lebanon,' she adds. 'We have in mind the photojournalism and the propagandistic images used in the war, as well as the images used by other powers, be they political or economic.'

For Hadjithomas and Joreige, form is inseparable from content, and both are equally important in generating meaning in their work. Rather than a vessel to carry content, form is part of an integrated strategy, which considers images and their uses and abuses. 'We don’t work on images because we're interested in images, we're interested in the context,' says Hadjithomas. 'That’s what pushes us to question. We have a lot of questions and we want to share them with others.

'I'm not suspicious of photojournalism necessarily, but I want to stem the flow of images and regain some power over them. In that sense, our work is political, because we take our context into consideration. When you’re aware of the context in which you produce your images you must be political.'

Robert Burley's Photographic Proof at Le Mois de la Photo in Montreal.

Robert Burley's contribution to Le Mois de la Photo a Montreal is a dramatic, larger-than-life depiction of a freshly-opened Polaroid, plastered on the outside of the Canadian Centre for Architecture. The material used to bond the image to the bricks is brand-new, made possible by digital technology, but both the 'Polaroid' frame and the subject Burley depicts pay tribute to an earlier photographic process - analogue. For Burley's image shows the controlled explosion of the Kodak-Pathe plant in Chalon-sur-Saone, France, near where Nicephore Niepce first discovered photography. It's part of a four-year project on the death of film photography called The Disappearance of Darkness, in which Burley photographs the destruction of photographic film and paper plants.

'I’m based in Toronto and in 2005 I discovered that Kodak Canada was going to close the plant nearby,' says Burley. 'I had access through people I knew, so I was able to go and document the plant before it closed down in 2006. It was fascinating because although I’ve been involved with photography since high school, I didn’t really have a thorough understanding of how photographic materials are made. Companies were often proprietorially secretive about their processes, so it was amazing to be able to see how it was done first-hand and have access to engineers who could explain more.

'This photograph [taken in France] was shot in December 2007. Kodak, a name that used to be synonymous with photography, did a number of scheduled implosions of film plants around the world because they really couldn’t be adapted to any other use, and also I think as a symbol of the company's development from one technology to another. It was really a big event - I joined a crowd of people, many of whom had worked there for many years, to see the end of traditional photography. This plant used to run seven days a week, 24 hours a day, producing football fields of paper. But digital technology is faster, cheaper, more flexible, so film is kind of over.'

Burley believes digital technology augurs death of traditional photography, partly because analogue films and papers rely on economies of scale to be made and - more fundamentally - because digital image-making doesn't command the same evidential status as analogue. 'I've called this installation Photographic Proof because what’s disappearing, alongside the photographic materials, is our faith in images,' he says. 'Of course it was always possible to manipulate film, but it was like sculpting with stone compared with sculpting with clay – it was very difficult and only possible with special tools. Digital technology changes all that.

He wants to explore those changes, and the new possibilities opened up by digital imaging, he says, rather than simply trying to reject it. 'I am a traditional photographer, I’ve worked with film and photographic paper my whole life but this piece is really about my confrontation with new technology,' he says. 'It's about trying to make sense of two technologies that really define photography today – the first the traditional films and paper, the other digital media. Digital imaging really redefines not just what I make in terms of the pictures but what you see as a viewer. There really isn't much of a relationship between films and papers and digital imaging, it's not a case of a simple evolution from one to the other, and that changes both our relationship to images, and how we look at the world through images.'