Le Centre d’exposition de l’Université de Montréal is presenting Architectures photographiées, a photographic journey of Marc Cramer, an exhibition that will run from November 16 to December 17, 2006. His work highlights eight recent projects created and constructed by Montreal-based architects. This photographic inquiry focuses on the production of four Québécois firms, namely Atelier Tag, Provencher Roy et associés, Saia Barbarese Topouzanov, and Saucier + Perrotte. These projects also involved the collaboration of other firms including: Beauchamp et Bourbeau, Desnoyers Mercure, Jodoin Lamarre Pratte, Menkes Shooner Dagenais Letourneux, and Tétreault Parent Languedoc.

The work of Marc Cramer is unique. His photographs do not simply depict buildings. They avoid simple visual descriptions of the subject matter and instead focus on the tectonic and plastic details, which according to the artist are the invisible gems of these large constructions. Cramer decomposes the image of the buildings, and disengages from their figurative and referential weight in order to reconfigure an abstract composition that becomes in and of itself an autonomous work of art. The exhibition presents over sixty photographs along with the artist’s working notes. There will also be a projection describing the dynamic nature of the artist’s journey within the buildings visited and recorded through photographs.

Born in France, Marc Cramer began his career in Europe with promising exhibitions. However, it is in Québec, where he has lived since the 1970s, that his career has reached its full potential. He is the winner of numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and has participated in both group and solo exhibitions of his photographic work, as well as of his housing creations. His photos appear regularly in architecture and design magazines in Canada, the United States and Europe. He is an icon in the field of architectural photography in Canada and teaches his craft at the Université de Montréal.