Correspondences, is a series of images in which Annis chooses an unorthodox approach to photography — one that abandons the camera apparatus completely. The image titles, Letters I – IX, recall the primary source material — the envelopes and postage labels used to create the images. Annis frequently develops projects in connection to historical contexts and in collaboration with other artists, and the series attests to the artist’s engagement with exchange and dialogue; and yet, without revealing the written content, the images become an homage more broadly to the practice of correspondence.

Created using fluid darkroom techniques, the series explores soft-edged photographic abstraction, in a process that embraces the nuances of the handmade and the timeworn, as well as a testimony to Fiona’s ongoing quest to reimagine the topology of time using a medium traditionally known to capture it.

This series was developed in the context of a residency and exhibition at the Guido Molinari Foundation, and presented alongside a parallel series of images, Correspondences I-XI, created directly from the epistolary archives of the Foundation to express networks of affinity and relationships of complicity in a new way. The exhibition is enriched with a series of public dialogues, a lighting intervention on the building’s façade entitled Safe light (la lampe inactinique), and a sound component by guest artist Stéphane Cocke.

Read the exhibition publication authored by Marie-Eve Beaupré

Read the exhibition review by Jérôme Delgado published in Le Devoir (French only)

Photo credits (exhibition views): Michael Patten

This project was supported by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec