The Spirit of Place : Focus on Location Photography

The exhibition The Spirit of a Place: Focus on Scouting Photography highlights an often neglected aspect of cinema: the photographs taken prior to filming.

These far from perfect images seek above all to capture the aesthetic potential of a location. Although their initial function is pragmatic, over time they take on a unique beauty, marked by the traces of their use — pinholes, notes, collages. These shots, intended as preparation for a production, capture something elusive: the spirit of a place, before it becomes the frame for a fictional work to come.

Header : Collage of location shots from the film Sous-sol
(Canada : Québec, Pierre Gang, 1996)

Main image : Location scouting photos mounted on one work file from the film Sous-sol (Canada : Québec, Pierre Gang, 1996)