Michel Campeau’s artistic work extends over the last five decades of contemporary photography. Fundamentally, the artist questions the origin of pictures, photographic archives and books that are at the heart of his existence. His acts of creation, in constant renewal, are part of an interiority that has broken away from the strict documentary conventions culminating in a multidimensional work that borrows from the private and the collective, as well as from anthropology and (socio) biography.
Among Campeau’s most recent productions is Industrial Splendor and Fetishism. Bruce Anderson's Collection, presented by British curator Paul Wombell at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts as part of the Mois de la Photo 2013, The series explores the architectural and "obsolete" features of analog devices. In that same year, the National Gallery of Canada, led by photography curator Andrea Kunard, presented the exhibition Icons of Obsolescence, focusing on the unparalleled aesthetics left behind with analog photography.
In 2015, Clément Chéroux and Karolina Lewandowska-Ziebinska honored the artist’s work in the thematic exhibition Qu’est-ce que la photographie ?, showcased at the Pompidou Center in Paris. More recently, the artist’s book model The Donkey That Became a Zebra was nominated for the Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award, Arles, France. Following this nomination, Campeau spearheaded the project Campeau, Carrière, Clément: Accumulations, the interweaving of monographs presented at the Simon Blais Gallery in September 2015. In collaboration with Celina Lunsford, Director of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, Campeau has developed an exhibition that will be touring Europe starting in spring 2017.
Several monographs and other published works mark the photographer’s path. In 2011, from Campeau’s gathering of vernacular pictures taken by amateur photographers, an album was included by Dutch editor Erik Kessels in the collection In Almost Every Picture, published by KesselsKramer, Netherlands. The monograph Photographic Darkroom: Photogenic Obsolescence was also published in 2013 by German publisher Kehrer Verlag. In 2007, Campeau’s monograph, Darkroom, edited by renowned British photographer, curator and collector Martin Parr, was the first book of a series by Parr to be published by Nazraeli Press, United States.
It should also be mentioned that more than thirty photographs from the series of darkrooms were exhibited by Director François Hebel, at the Rencontres d'Arles in 2010. Moreover, in 1996, Pierre Dessureault organized a retrospective for the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, entitled Eloquent images: photographic works, 1971-1996.
Michel Campeau received, in Japan, the Higashikawa International Award of Photography in 1994. Among the many creation and research bursaries he received, he was also awarded the Jean-Paul Riopelle Career grant given by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, in 2009 and the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography in 2010, awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts.
The artist is represented by Simon Blais Gallery in Montreal and his work is part of many collections, both in Canada and around the world.
Michel Campeau was born in 1948. He lives and works in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.