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photography by paul vienneau Stratford, Prince Edward Island, Canada 902.367.7845/902.940.5205(cell) |
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___________________________________________________________________________________________ [Biography] [Artist Statement] [Contact] [Galleries] [Prints] [Calendars] all text/photos/artwork copyright 2007 Paul Vienneau ___________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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Where Photographers Roam Article by Elissa Barnard Chronicle Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia Saturday, February 18, 2006 Paul Vienneau used to take photographs of Nova Scotia so he would feel less homesick when he lived in Toronto. When he moved back home, he didn't need to document Nova Scotia anymore. But by then, he was hooked on photography. Vienneau is one of seven new members of Halifax's ViewPoint Gallery exhibiting their photographs in the annual NewPoints show at the Gottingen Street space through February 26. A bass guitarist, Vienneau will get up before sunrise- unheard of for a musician- to capture the P.E.I. landscape at dawn. Many of his photographs in this exhibit are from P.E.I., his wife's birthplace., and two feature horses owned by the lightkeeper on Panmure Island. "After shooting the sunrise, I'll usually end up with a coffee and a book, sitting with these horses", says Vienneau. "They usually eat breakfast around 8:30, 9. I'll listen to them chew, and they chuff and stamp the ground and they remind me of two people who love each other. So I'll eavesdrop on them". At 37, Vienneau's life is changing direction, away from music to photography, and towards a new life in Charlottetown with his wife, an interior designer from Brudenell. Vienneau's life changed dramatically over 10 years ago when he was working as a musician in Toronto and was severely injured in an accident. One day he was cycling in Toronto with his older brother Kevin. "In August of 1991, I was on my mountain bike and while going through an intersection, a tractor trailer ignored my right of way and knocked me over and ran over me". Vienneau spent two years in hospital, had over 30 operations and learned how to use a wheelchair. Still, he stayed in Toronto. "I didn't want to feel I'd given up and gone home to be taken care of by my mother". In the mid 1990s, he bought a camera to take photographs in Nova Scotia on his visits home to remind him back in Toronto of his two favourite places, Lunenburg and Lawrencetown Beach. "From Toronto, it looked like the Nova Scotia I loved was disappearing with condos and stuff. I came down to collect pictures", says Vienneau, who grew up in Dartmouth. "In 2000, I came to play with the Hopping Penguins. We did the Tall Ships, and I realized I wanted to move home". He changed his approach to photography away from documentary. "I discovered Freeman Patterson, Tony Sweet and Stephen Patterson and impressionist and abstract photographs that weren't limited by genre. It showed me I could use the little piece of film like a canvas. With very long exposures, you can paint with the colours and make the picture more about feeling instead of cataloguing something. And it was really liberating". Vienneau, whose photographs are clean and spare and dramatic, is also keen on design in photography. "As a person who relies on a wheelchair, I am unable to walk up certain hills or get to the exact spots that traditional landscape photographers go to shoot. Using visual design and by bending the constraints of 'genre', I am trying to create a body of work that is personally meaningful", he says, "and that communicates to the viewer the way I react to what I'm looking at, whether it's a couple of horses, some graffiti, a refection on a car or a sunrise over eastern PEI". Vienneau also looked at American abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, whose paintings sometimes contain just two squares in a canvas. "To me, that can be graffiti or two segments of a door or a field and a sky". In 2002, he married his college sweetheart Pam Beck at Lawrencetown Beach. In 2005, she surprised him with a Minolta 7D digital SLR camera, which he loves to use because he can look at what he's taken and then adjust his composition to "clarify" his vision. "With digital, I can see if I'm on the right track with something", says Vienneau, who has a collection of different cameras including film cameras for multiple exposures. When asked the hard question of why do you do what you do, Vienneau pauses. "For me it's the way the arts - whether it's reading or playing music or doing this - it's a way I connect myself to the universe. I love creating order out of chaos whether it's using the 12 notes of a scale for music or whether it's finding a beautiful scene and finding a way to make it look the way it makes me feel. It's just fun". Vienneau, who has played salsa, Cuban music, reggae, blues and jazz, has toured internationally as a musician and played with Carlos del Junco in Toronto and locally with many musicians including Joe Murphy and Doris Mason. "As a sideman...You could have a different sideman every night and nobody would notice". Photography is a more direct and individual form of expression for him. "This way I get to use what I see with my eye to communicate with people", says Vienneau. His new website will be up early next week at this address: www.paulvienneau.com. |