Photos by Florence Debeugny - artistic statement

Florence Debeugny was born and raised in France and moved to Canada in 1979. As a photographic artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia since 1982, Debeugny’s practice has been deeply informed by the abundant interplay between natural and industrial landscapes in BC, a terrain transfigured by the concentrated effort of its inhabitants to bridle the region’s natural resources. In investigation of this subject, Debeugny’s approach ranges from the mode of abstraction to the deeply contextualized format of documentary photography and video.

During the spring of 2000, Debeugny found a rich resource of another sort in British Columbia’s abandoned mining communities in the East Kootenays. As she photographed and documented the rusted, rotted, and skeletal remains of these once thriving settlements, her attention was brought to bear upon the material elements of the industrial realm. Through meticulous exploration of the surface of industry, Debeugny came to recognize the social components of these industrial structures, and to appreciate the value of a provincial heritage generally overlooked. The result was At the Edge of Wilderness (2000), a collaborative multimedia installation created for exhibition coordinated by the Western Front Gallery. The work integrates Debeugny’s photographs with a composition by sound artist Hildegard Westerkamp.

In the years that followed, Debeugny’s lens increasingly fixed upon the raw material of ghostly structures found in the industrial districts of Greater Vancouver. At close range is seen the continual inscription of the natural world–wood rots, metal rusts, stone crumbles. With Deterioration (2002), Debeugny interrogates these substances, noting the changes in their composition as the passage of time continues, working to understand the circumstances of each. Her attention shifts between the aesthetics of decay and the rhetoric of sustainability, opening a contemplative space within which the viewer may consider how capital moves, whom it displaces, and where it leaves its footprint.

While focusing, quite literally, on the details of urban and industrial structures, Debeugny came to a startling realization–she was very often looking through one structure to “see” more closely another. Dirty glass, chain-link fence, broken plastic–all acted as permeable barriers between the pedestrian and the industrialized territory. Enabled by the telephoto lens, a photographer is able to trespass such boundaries. For Debeugny, the ramshackle boundary itself becomes of interest, and in the photographic series Through (2004) she allows it to slip in and out of focus to emphasize the tangled layers of foreground and background, subject and object. A new dimensionality is made manifest through the abstraction of form and subtle shifting of the focal plane.

It was while attempting to publish a book featuring Deterioration that a BC publisher encouraged Debeugny to explore the coast’s old settlements. On that advice, Debeugny embarked upon a photographic excursion to Ocean Falls, a former pulp mill town. There, Debeugny entered into conversation with former inhabitants whose lives had been shaped by the forest industry in meaningful ways. However, none of these impromptu interviews was recorded, an oversight which she came to regret.

Upon starting a new project on the old cannery villages of BC’s Central and Northern coast, Debeugny was afforded the opportunity once again to interview (and this time record) peopleshe encountered. In this way she was able to incorporate their stories and memories into her still photography, thereby mitigating the resounding silence that permeates much photo-documentary work. And so, for the multi-disciplinary work Almost Gone, Remains of Cannery Villages (2006) Debeugny returns once more to the sites of displacement that so influenced the direction of her work when she was producing At the Edge of Wilderness. This montage of photographs, video footage, interviews and soundtrack juxtaposes the remains of cannery villages and memories of people who once lived and worked on the remote Central and Northern BC coasts.

In 2006, Almost Gone, Remains of Cannery Villages was presented at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery Historical Site in Steveston and the North Pacific Historical Village in Port Edward. Screening this work at memorial sites is itself significant, giving the work deeper resonance as the images and voices of the past echo in the archival tombs of the present.

A recurring object in the landscapes and ruins that are Debeugny’s subject has been the bright yellow ‘CAUTION’ tape that is inevitably draped here and there, to varying degrees of effectiveness, on industrial worksites. Over a period of four years, Debeugny documented the life-span of ‘CAUTION’ tapes, which are transformed by their environment from shiny new tape with sharp black letters creating a forbidding linear barrier, to a dejected-looking shapeless form–no longer able to stand at attention and perform its intended role. In the photographic series Precaution (2007), we see these bright yellow tapes everywhere. They are a powerful symbol, causing us to detour, from our intended path, around a site.

While photographing construction sites for Precaution, Debeugny again shifted her focus by taking a step back to look at the larger picture. Older homes in downtown Vancouver are regularly leveled to clear the ground for towering high-rises. In the name of increasing the city’s “housing density”, one wonders: What is being constructed? What is being disassembled? What kind of city are we creating? What kind of culture will emerge as a result? “Heritage conservation”, benevolent as it sounds, tends to describe the capitalist activities of municipalities and enterprising individuals, rather than the day-to-day efforts of the now-present communities confronted with few options for survival. The so-called “heritage home” becomes a status symbol to increase not only property value but also the divide between rich and poor, as the latter are displaced to make room for the good intentions of the former.

In the full-length documentary Giants Leap / À pas de géants (2007), originally screened at the Vancouver Museum in conjunction with a panel discussion with Heritage Vancouver Society, one is given an opportunity to reflect on these pressing issues and enter into a meaningful discussion about them within one’s own community. Giants Leap puts into conversation the anecdotes of long-time inhabitants, reluctant to leave their homes, and the ambitions and justifications of city planners, journalists, and heritage conservationists attempting to strike some kind of balance between the demands for economic prosperity and sustaining diversity in our communities. The film continues to gain audiences in politically active communities, serving as a catalyst for much-needed discussion on the issue of Eco Density as the City of Vancouver relentlessly pursues its objective to create the image of a “world-class city” in preparation for the 2010 Olympiad.

Beginning with the aestheticization of industrial ghettoes and arriving at larger questions about the supposed conflict between industry and culture, Debeugny’s work over the past eight years documents process. On the one hand we see her own process–her fascinations, methodologies, and discoveries. And on the other we see the processing of capital, from its material instances to its social networks. In the ebb and flow of capital, communities built on industry swiftly emerge and eventually disband or redistribute themselves. Through Debeugny’s artistic inquiries into this movement, we are afforded opportunities to contemplate the use-value of such transformations in a society infatuated with “progress” in the form of increasing industrialization of our global economy and the natural world.

Reproduction of material from any pages without permission is prohibited. Copyright © Florence Debeugny 2008. All rights reserved.