Coupures de presse

I have been interested in the press, on both visual and theoretical levels, since more than 40 years, following my studies in communications and my first research papers in that field. Since the early eighties, I have gathered a large collection of images and texts culled from newspapers and magazines. These can be treated as cultural artefacts and tools for raising awareness. I choose clippings as if they were « motifs » to be singled out, analysed and enhanced, in order to reveal new meanings, allowing for a critical scrutiny of images and texts on issues of power, violence and masculine identity, among other things. Indeed, how can we take a position on the written press, at a time of global overproduction and dramatization of information? In comparison with the ephemeral nature of radio, television or Internet transmission, the printed newspaper and magazine represent the only news still in the form of an “object.” Like the printed book, they are “poor” technologies that survive nonetheless, in spite of all the current alternatives. And yet, due to its very fragility, the newspaper also refers to the ephemeral nature of news items, that thin margin between yesterday and tomorrow.

The printmaking project “Tendresses” (2002) and the “Coupures de presse” series (1996-1998) are in direct continuity with my installation “Un mur d'hommes” (1990-1992), a wall assemblage of images taken from newspapers and magazines, focusing on masculine representation. Further on, I looked for a way of lending a greater durability to this type of proposition, and the chine collé technique—in which an image is printed on Japanese paper and glued to a larger sheet—proved ideal, since it preserves the image's cut-out, floating quality.

“Tendresses” offers a collection of masculine pairs in tender situations or physical proximity. In accumulating these images, often overlooked or seemingly accepted by everyone, I wish to insist on the fact that men can and should express tenderness between themselves, along a broad spectrum of feelings, from fellowship and friendship to a love commitment. By way of a phenomenology of how images and texts are read, how we perceive information and tie it to our own experience, I invite viewers to become aware of this often unacknowledged reality of masculine tenderness. Relearning this tenderness would certainly help relations between men, and social relations in general.

- Denis Lessard

Photos : Patrick Mailloux