To Julien
(2017)
"As I was leaving the premises yesterday afternoon, the receptionist at Motel Cap-Blanc told me that we were not talking enough about Îlot Julien. I had just asked her my question about you, the one I was talking about. have asked a few times since my arrival here: do you know who Julien was? She closed her eyes to better collect her memories, and answered me what several had answered me before her: I did not the slightest idea. I then thought back to the few exchanges I had already had while walking in the village, conversations about you - not that I absolutely want to find your trace, in fact I am especially curious to know what you can leave as an imprint in your community, after you donate your first name to the landscape. Obviously, that doesn't mean much. I was told that you were probably a fisherman. But nobody was able to tell me what time you lived. Even the current owner confessed to me that he was not real t asked the question. A lady, however, told me that one day you lent your cabin to a newlywed couple for their wedding night, it's the best story I've heard about you and I immediately thought: j I would have liked to be this Robinson Crusoe in love, the time of a tide.
So you have disappeared from collective memory, Julien. Sorry. Everyone knows your Îlot in Kamouraska. It is this rock at the exit of the village which looks like the back of a camel, with its two humps, two almost twin protuberances, it is easy. One hundred and thirty meters long, eight hundred meters from the shore, half of an entirely denuded hectare and myriads of noisy and magnificent birds which star its sky. Twice a day at ebb, the foreshore emerges and the island is no longer one. I went there in the early morning light on Sunday. I put on my boots, crossed the expanse of mud and then sand, and came face to face with your cabin - at least, what remains of it: a cluster of scattered planks, gray with sun and spray ; a rusty stove pipe; some other remains that I could not identify. A local history book told me that a storm won the day in 2012. On the other hand, it seems to have spared the two eel cages placed one above the other a few steps away. from there, I had seen them from my room with my glasses and I was intrigued.
Around your ruins, female common eiders were incubating their eggs. I disturbed one that flew away in a hurry in front of me, so I quickly left to give them the peace they are entitled to. After all, I told myself, this islet belongs to them more than to any other. I took back the direction of the village, the light was impressive, and the rising tide soon isolated the rock again until evening. "
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This project is the result of a residency held in April 2017 as part of the 9th edition of the Rencontre photographique du Kamouraska.
Curator: Franck Michel.
