Louis Perreault
in Bonaventure

“Les affluents is a photo project that deploys a succession of images touching on themes of family, nature and the continuous cycles that animate them. From the microcosm of the forest to landscapes of larger areas, we perceive the details of the bodies of two boys, my sons, whom I look at affectionately, seeing them develop a personal and intimate relationship with nature. Thus, the gaze I direct at the landscape is the reflection of the one I focus on my loved ones. In the series, the narration nonetheless avoids a precise description of the sites, movements and people presented, instead taking its place in a poetry of evocation, where the rhythm of sequences, the size of images and their positioning with respect to the others seek to create an impressionistic and meditative picture.

“With this project I wanted to explore the nature of family connections and the relationship we maintain with territory. The title Les affluents evokes the interdependence of beings and things, as well as their singular relationships expressing themselves as ‘occasional sparks produced by the slipping, the shock and the slight shift of the other phenomena’¹ of our world. The tributary of a body of water also suggests a number of significant ideas of poetic potential that are fascinating to my mind: the confluences (the meeting places of several pathways of water), the influence of one of the waterways on the flow of the other, the uncountable quantity of tributaries hurling themselves at one another and, finally, the nature of their single destination: the ocean. Each of these ideas, it seems to me, echoes the nature of our human connections: they’re created in a complex network of influences, merging, contacts and sharing.” – Louis Perreault

^1. Bruno Latour. Changer de société, refaire de la sociologie. Paris, La découverte, p. 55.