LAROQUE

Circumambulations

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By Patrick La Roque

It was a return of sorts. To the city, on a more extensive shoot than anything I’d attempted in the past 18 months or so. But also a return to the 35 mm field of view, after mostly favouring 50 mm since the release of the X-Pro2, eons ago.

I wanted crowds, but found very few. I wanted the theatrical immersion I remembered, bodies moving in mock symmetry around me, like starlings, unaware of the sketches they paint. Instead, I saw lone figures, immobile or barely disruptive. Sculptures, stilled against a brutalist backdrop.

There is beauty in a city gone quiet—I can’t argue that. Life feels suspended, moments pulled away from the timeline, broken into separate objects, floating. And the truth is, I could easily get used to this; but it might not be healthy.

A social animal requires a society.
A stage needs performers.

Shot with the X-Pro3 and XF 23mm f/1.4 R LM WR

New Monuments

By Patrick La Roque

In 1963, Diane Arbus submitted a proposal to the Guggenheim Foundation. Her goal was to document modern human rituals—from dog shows to beauty parlours, dancing lessons and picnics. Because, she said, “These are our symptoms and our monuments”.

Humanity exists through ceremony. I don’t just mean religious or formal events, but those small, everyday rites we use to weave stories, of ourselves to ourselves. Every trip to the mall, every soccer game and weekday dinner defines us. 

Over the years, I took for granted the quiet rhythm of our lives. I captured a lot of it, aware of the urgency, and yet these moments still seemed eternal: walking the kids to the bus stop; reading to them at bedtime. Driving up to the countryside to visit Cynthia’s mom and dad on weekends, sleeping over, waking up to the sound of chatter and the smell of coffee—that novelty bird clock chirping madly, every hour on the hour. Once in a while my sister would come over for drinks, her girls, our gang, would all play games together downstairs and have a blast; we’d find them loud and slightly annoying, not realizing this would soon pass. Not realizing we’d miss the outbursts and the laughter.

These were our monuments.
And they were made of sand.
And they’ve been washed away.

Life did most of the work. The pandemic piled on. ...

…

From Reflect - Regret or Regain by Jonas Rask

From Reflect - Regret or Regain by Jonas Rask

I chose Jonas’s very tight self-portrait as my inspiration because I saw a dissolution of reality that immediately spoke to me. And because frankly, that’s all I’m able to perceive these days: the commonplace bending to the physics of funhouse mirrors. As a photographer, it’s my way of faking something new out of the old, I guess, or tricking myself into believing a larger world is somehow accessible. It isn’t, not yet. The fact is, closeness, in all of its forms, to the point of being devoured whole, is all we have left at the moment. It’s all I have to give, anyway.

Until we build new monuments.

The Chain: An Introduction

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By Patrick La Roque

One year of the pandemic. I’m sick of it, you’re sick of it…we’re all tired of hearing or reading about it. But I write this on March 11, 2021—the official, international commemorative day; it’s hard not to acknowledge. The flags here are at half-mast and the church bells rang as we observed one minute of silence. What some people have lost is beyond words.

It was clear from a recent meeting that all of us in the collective (like most of you, I’m sure) have also been deeply affected creatively. But it was obvious we all needed to get our act together and carry on. Feeling inspired may be hard, opportunities may still be few, but settling into apathy is the worst thing any of us could do. Eventually, it only leads to a mild dissolution of our soul.

Besides: life appears to finally be changing for the better. Jonas—our resident physician on the front lines—was vaccinated. We all should be in the coming months. We’ll step out of our closed circles again, tentatively at first, I imagine, but with increasing confidence.

We’re a stubborn bunch, us humans.

…

The Chain isn’t a theme, but a mechanism. We’ve decided to steer clear of an overarching subject this time, and instead use each story as a springboard for the next one. If you’re familiar with the surrealists’ exquisite cadaver (or corpse) technique, the concept is similar (1). The idea is that each of our individual essays will be inspired by an image from the one that came before. We’ll then have six days to find and prepare the following week’s content.

Of course, as the first one in line I get to cheat, don’t I? Well, sort of. Last week I read about a re-edition of Robert Adams’ Summer Nights, Walking, from Steidl. Leading me to New Topographics. I love the work behind this movement, but I’ve also always been envious of the name they chose. Downright jealous, really, of how powerful those words look on a page, the images they conjure, and how well they fit their subject: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape. Damn.

Long story short, I used this as my springboard, to force myself into a somewhat similar framework to the one we’re adopting. The pictures have nothing to do with the movement or its approach, but they do illustrate a makeshift topography which wouldn’t exist without man’s imprint. And they connect to our still inescapable reality—where imagination remains our only means of travel, however abstract.

We’re excited about this new project and hope you’ll enjoy where it takes us. In the immortal words of Fleetwood Mac: chain, keep us together.

…………………….

  1. With the exception of only seeing part of the previous contribution. That would be hard to do in this case. 

Puddles are Windows and Fissures are Roads

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By Patrick La Roque

Imaginary shorelines and mythical roadmaps.
I drown in the depths of my mind’s eye, waters remixed
into new materials.

Soundscape 031021

DEFINITION 44 | THE 1200M MIND SPACE

By Patrick La Roque

We’d been raking the last leaves from our yard and had moved to pulling out the few dead remnants left in our garden (tomatoes mostly), when Heloise ran up to us with an iPad in her hands: “Joe Biden has won!”.

I didn’t react with any real joy or relief; just a sort of workmanlike acknowledgement: good, that’s done then. Like a checkmark on a long list of todos. It was only hours later that my senses finally caught up to the opposite reality of those words: he was out. We still had a chance at normalcy and kindness. 

Maybe.

Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre-Elliot Trudeau (yes, our current PM’s dad) famously said, during a meeting with Nixon in 1969:

“Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt,".

Sleeping with an erratic and enraged animal has been mind numbing these past four years. Witnessing such a profound derangement of every norm we took for granted—on human and political scales—has maintained us in a constant, unrelenting state of unrest. It’s been economically and psychologically exhausting. And now, despite the outcome, we’re forced to witness just how close we are to a complete destruction of the world order, as authoritarian levers are, predictably, being pulled one by one: the claims of electoral fraud and vilifying of the press and media; the firing of top administration officials and military leaders, replaced by loyalists; the complicit cabal of talking heads spewing conspiracy theories night after night, feeding the fables and frenzy of the misinformed.

There is no courage, no humility, no decency. No sense of duty. Only the raging fear and cowardice of a beast facing its demise.

...

I did a quick calculation this week: it’s been 255 days since I set foot in Montreal. We mostly exist within a 1200m radius of our home, in the suburbs. Sure we drive further on occasion—Jacob works at the supermarket twice a week—but beyond this, the circle is rarely broken. The circle defines our mind space now. 

In this year of dwindling horizons, I’m desperate for a ruffling of wind in our sail.
For new and old shores to appear;
for sacred illuminated lands;
for hope,
injected in poisoned bloodstreams.

Definition 35 | Typecast

By Patrick La Roque

I really did completely lose track of this assignment. I never do that. It's funny how so many plans just fizzle out these days, diluted in the permeating haze. Btw can I mention just how sick I am of always adding these days to everything I write? It's almost like an apology. I need to stop doing this. 

The goal of the Definitions project was to take a deep dive into who we are, as individuals and photographers. Of course, we never imagined so much would change. Our private conversations, as a group, have slowed considerably. Mainly because I think we're all tired of constantly repeating ourselves (“all good here, kinda...not much to add...same old, same old...”), or too busy focusing on survival, on the future, our families and our sanity.
Sigh…

I hated airplanes.
I miss airplanes.
I miss the knowledge of possible encounters. I miss hanging out with my buddies halfway across the globe too. Our planet was tiny and it got big again. Sprawling, desert-like and unattainable.

Most people define themselves through the work they do—I am a lawyer, I am a programmer, I am an electrician—but there remains a form of compartmentalization. When the day ends, the persona usually gets left behind. I don't want to pretend we're in any way special, but I believe it IS different for creative types. Because the engine for that work, the persona's roots, spring from within ourselves. It becomes difficult to separate this from the whole. The walls are thinner here.

So, what's left to define then, when our activity stops? Who are we left with? I feel like a TV actor whose show has ended. Typecast and suddenly without a script to learn and remember.

...

These are pictures of objects that surround me.
Some have meaning, some are merely clues to other spaces;
all are portals,
into the past or future.

Definition 026 | Screed

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By Patrick La Roque

untitled draft, July 6
Horse Machines

welcome to the holding pattern
shadow play
of limbs flailing
in endless twists

hour upon hour,
day upon day.

i can’t define who i am anymore
i can’t define the world
i can’t define the news
i can’t decipher monday from sunday from friday from easter or winter or fall.

welcome to the holding cell
where crowds gather when i dream
and i cower in fear.
funhouse baroque theaters
packed
got a show to do
got no script
got no words.

welcome to static
white pink and brown
noise
angry
flooding the airwaves.
drunk and blubbering idiots spitting on
sidewalks
chanting automaton patriots of hellscape.
they don’t define me either
i am amorphous
i am intangible
i am liquid
drying.
i squeeze into gaps
of land
rising above barren skies
listening to the black angels,
ears plugged,
outside cancelled,
deep reverb drips & licks
to coat my tongue.

i blast with fury,
blast the gods
with twisting heart writhing
and blood stained hands;
i'm a horse machine
and horse machines are black and white.

who do we think we are anyway?
the moon is gone and mars is dead
if we won't resist.
this is a culling
a reckoning
shockwave purity dance
texas hold’em
flush
and circle down.

the future is typewritten?
fuck the future;
that’s gone too.

...

When life veered off its normal course I retreated into a fragmentary place. Now, I struggle to see the whole again. It’s all broken up. The focal lengths I use don’t even matter anymore: all I see are shapes draped in shadows. And I’m scared, to tell you the truth. Scared to have lost something, to now shoot the decorative instead of the meaningful. Scared to be unmoored forever, adrift on a sea of mismatched parts. No shoreline, no real horizon to cut through the curvature of time.

My mind is full, exploding in fact, but my body is numb, exhausted from too many early dawns, sunrises and birdsongs. From watching our southern border and reeling. So thank god for movie nights, eleventh birthdays and cake. For tall grass where cicadas hide and moan.

We’ll be ok.
We’ll be different.
We’ll be fine.
Like a raging torrent,
unstoppable.

Definition 017 | Seedling

By Patrick La Roque

Imagine a dot. It might symbolize a beginning, the flashpoint from which our universe expanded. Or it can signify the end—a period, in the last sentence of a diary. Every day is a dot right now. And I’ll be damned if I know which side of the timeline it represents.

The other day I saw a young child reunited with his grandpa, on the evening news. The scene had been shot in Italy, as the country slowly attempts a return to normalcy. I felt a lump in my throat. Sure, I can be sensitive...but this was odd.

Today’s my birthday—May 5. Usually the trees have turned a soft green, not yet full of leaves but a promise. Not this year. Like us, nature seems to be waiting; and there’s a frost warning for tonight. So as you may have guessed, the images in this essay are a trick of the camera’s eye: blown-up, even the smallest bit of life can fill our hearts.

Imagine a dot.
Let’s call it a seed.

Definition 009 | It Would Not See Colour

By Patrick La Roque

Well, this took a turn. I was initially going deeper into self-examination for this essay, writing down thoughts about the fluidity of identity, not yet exactly sure of the angle but getting there, slowly. And then the words suddenly felt...claustrophobic.

The concept of how we define ourselves is immense. It branches out from our private thoughts, to our perception of others through language and culture; to tribes and to nations. As we can now see all too clearly however, these are nothing but shells. Ultimately we’re not red or white or black or blue; we’re not doctors or kings. We’re not even photographers. We’re a collection of atoms, all of us assembled according to a single blueprint. All of us carrying the same design flaws.

It’s humbling, this virus. It lays waste to class and to borders and makeshift walls. It equalizes. It levels. It does not differentiate. It attacks a single organism…
Us.
One identity.

...

I don’t scare easily. But I admit being afraid for my friends, my family. I admit being terrified for my kids. So yes, this story took a turn. I shot multiple exposures, then I scribbled and painted on the images in an attempt at exorcism. 

It doesn’t define anything.
It might express something. 

Definition 001 | Music, Theatre & Persona

By Patrick La Roque

Two, three times—over the course of this strange, meandering life—I tried quitting. The guitar would go hiding in its case, the synths would go up against a wall somewhere. They’d gather dust for a few months but it never lasted. I once described it to myself as a sort of virus or bacteria, not so much flesh-eating as soul-eating, but just as voracious and cruel in its relentlessness. 

As a kid I’d draw fake album covers. As a teenager I’d sit for hours on end, staring at the sprawling double-canvas of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, imagining Slippermen and Lamias on rain soaked New York City streets. Gabriel wailing as Rael. To this day, Fly on a Windshield/Broadway Melody of 1974 affects me deeply—and Lenny Bruce remains emblematic, almost mystical because of it. Those sounds, images and references shaped my mythology and I still vibrate when I hear a Mellotron or a Solina, my brain electrified and unable to resist the drag of the machine.

That hungry, hungry Time Machine. 

...

We wear masks to define ourselves. It doesn’t make us dishonest, it doesn’t mean we’re hiding behind a facade—not necessarily anyway. I think we wear masks to better understand the theatre. And on the opening essay of this new series, I need to acknowledge my very first play: before photography there was music. There will always be music.

In heartbreak
devastation & cruelty.
In freedom & blissful exaltation. 

definition 001
Horse Machine