Dani Hausmann at L’hotel Particulier

In a new series, now being shown in Griffintown’s L’Hotel Particuler, Dani Hausmann explores a more sculptural approach to capturing and presenting his subjects. In line with his previous work such as SITEings and Squeegees, he combs through the topographical fringe of Montreal; admiring its histories, traditions, transitions and people.

Challenging himself to “get it all in”, Hausmann innovates the traditional photographic frame by physically building a flat, sculptural object made of over a hundred photographs taken over the course of a day in one location. Accumulating as many possible shots of a designated site, the shape of the visual outline becomes lenient to particular shadows, the elongation of one tree branch or the desire to capture every weather pattern that passes overhead. Like pieces of a puzzle, every photograph represents an integral atmospheric element of the greater image.

Touring old haunts of Montreal, camera in hand, Dani Hausmann dissects the layers of time and nuance in transient spaces. Landmarks of the city fall victim to nature’s grasp, burgeoning construction sites expose raw terrain and the spaces that hang in between entice curiosity and anticipation to take the road less travelled.

In his piece Deseigneurs, the local landscape is the Lachine Canal, drained and exposing fossilized layers of rock and roots entangled. Nature styles her way into graceful hills and intricate maneuvers to draw a mythic maze around the plans of urbanity.

Dani takes the viewer along in his wanderlust adventure, through decisions at the crossroads to discoveries made. In the last photograph of this series, Joel, Hausmann emerges from the proverbial forest and arrives at the urban fringe once more. The signs of time are seen in the juxtaposition of ancestral yet modern architectures being torn down to the ground for whatever becomes the new contemporary. A man appears from behind a gate and displays his bare chest and tattoos. Joel brings Hausmann’s new series full circle with a wholesome yet referential return to his past series ‘ Squeegees’, and a reflection on the temporal nature of the human body and its instrumentation in this world we have travelled and designed.