Annie France Leclerc

A table strewn with little bottles filled with natural inks, flowers, herbs, stones, piles of books, images, and photographs welcomed us into the multidisciplinary artist Annie France Leclerc’s maximalist studio. The studio overflowed freely to the outdoors, where a summer kitchen was set up; simmering on a hotplate were the natural solutions with which she makes her photographs. Through her rich processes of iteration, accumulation, abundance, and improvisation, Leclerc used her residency at Est-Nord-Est to return to sources both by reconstructing photography as a medium and by delving into the themes in her practice.

Leclerc casts off the rigid conventions and controlled conditions of the photographic act and embraces, instead, the uncertainty and indetermination that typify lumens – images made by exposing photographic paper to sunlight. She leaves sheets of paper outdoors for from several hours to several days, then returns to discover the results. Only when she is happy with the exposure does she fix the image. The idea is to free herself from the control imposed by the photographic process, and ultimately she thinks of her lumens as co-created with the environment, the weather conditions, natural light, and her barely-two-year-old son Élie. Although initially she tried to keep her art experiments out of his reach, after several unexpected collaborations she shifted her focus and welcomed these impromptu intergenerational interventions, which guide her on both the formal and conceptual levels.

When she began her residency, Leclerc was interested in studying local invasive plants, but, inspired by Élie’s interventions, her readings, and the work of the artist Caroline Boileau, she eventually turned to the theme of motherhood. Deeply touched by the participatory collection Artists Raising Kids[1], she wove improbable links among breastfeeding, the mother’s breast, the child’s dependency on the mother, and the vegetation native to the Bas-du-Fleuve region. Visiting her studio was like bursting in on a blossoming research-creation project.

[1] Andrew Simonet, Artists Raising Kids: Compendium (Philadelphia: Artists U, n.d.), https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53767189e4b07d0c6bf4b775/t/5388abffe4b02f7f94909052/1401465855677/Artists+Raising+Kids+Compendium.pdf