Incipit – COVID-19 | Touching dive into the pandemic

The McCord Stewart Museum presents the exhibition Incipit – COVID-19 which stems from an order placed in 2020 with photographer Michel Huneault to document the first wave of the pandemic in Montreal. The result is 150 images, sensitive, representative, moving, which speak of us: confined, hospitalized, survivors, hospital staff, members of the armed forces. Without forgetting all those who unfortunately fell in combat…

Eric Clement
The Press

A nurse is bent over a patient’s bed in a hospital. While holding his hand, she hums softly next to him. This man is his grandfather. He is succumbing to COVID-19.

This moving scene, which gives chills, is a highlight of the visit to the exhibition Incipit – COVID-19. We cannot reproduce the image. As with other photographs taken by Michel Huneault as part of this project, the museum and the artist wanted to prevent those of a very private nature from being disseminated in the media or social networks. Out of respect for the families.

Visitors to the exhibition will thus appreciate on site how well this documentation work reflects what we experienced during the first wave of COVID-19. Confinement, frustrations, sacrifices, surges of solidarity, efforts to alleviate suffering and shorten the pandemic, collective resilience. Only the demonstrations of impatience and disagreement are lacking in the exhibition.

Michel Huneault was in Japan when the disease appeared. He was working on another part of his corpus on the impacts of the 2011 tsunami. Repatriated in time to Quebec on March 23, 2020, he discovered a completely confined province. “The clash was incredible, he recalls, because the day before, I had said goodbye to my Japanese friends, in a restaurant, all stuck together, sharing food with our chopsticks, hugs, etc. ! Upon arrival in Montreal, it was empty everywhere. »

Confined, the photographer received an email from Hélène Samson, then curator of photography at the museum. She offered to document the pandemic.

Michel Huneault took his first shots on April 7, 2020, at the end of his quarantine. He completed his mission in July, as beds became free and public gatherings reappeared. The report within the hospitals was carried out for 20 non-consecutive days, between May 8 and June 22, 2020 within the Verdun hospital, the Notre-Dame hospital and the Maimonides geriatric hospital center, in Côte -Saint-Luc. A rather exceptional work, because the Quebec hospital environment is generally very closed to photographic reports. For ethical, health and privacy reasons.

But the three health establishments trusted the experienced photographer, which gives quite remarkable results. On the work of doctors, nurses and orderlies. And on the drama of the infected people, in particular – and above all – the oldest. We also find in the exhibition images of this Montreal that we had never known. Deserted streets in broad daylight, barricaded parks, protective plastics in shops, queues in supermarkets, even condemned basketball hoops.

The exhibition also includes portraits of Montrealers that sum up our states of mind during the first wave. Some are serious. They could have been taken before the pandemic. However, we feel in these people, these couples, these children, a tension, a meditation or even this hope to get out of it.

Next to the portraits, Michel Huneault placed letters, messages that anonymous people wrote during the first wave, expressing their feelings. Eloquent testimonials.

This exhibition will be the subject, this Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the museum, of a round table around the documentary work of Michel Huneault.

Since this project, Michel Huneault has changed his perspective on human behavior. He was interested in the consequences of climate change. His corpus entitled Peninsula will be presented at the Musée de la Gaspésie, starting October 20. He was in artistic residence, last June and July, in the Basque Country, thanks to the digital creation center Topo. From this will result, in early 2023, an online work and an indoor exhibition, on the theme of the border. Finally, the last videographic element of his Japanese corpus, Vertigo: 10 new Tohoku walls, will be shown at the Pierre-François Ouellette gallery, starting November 19. A very busy autumn for Michel Huneault… before he returns to Japan next March.

Incipit – COVID-19at the McCord Stewart Museum, 690 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, until January 22