Canadian Evasion

August 2023. Five days after arriving in Montreal for the exchange, I took my backpack and left on foot toward Mont-Tremblant. No car, no fixed plan. I had the Rollei 35, a box of Kodak Portra 400, and twelve days ahead of me.

Kodak Portra 400 is the soft natural light film. It doesn't force anything. The greens of the boreal forest stay green, not oversaturated. Quebec's grey skies keep their density without being pushed into artificial blue. What Portra does best is hold the complexity of tones when light changes quickly. It does that in Quebec, between two storms.

Four days hiking in Mont-Tremblant park. On the second night, the storm tore through the tent and I slept half inside, half out. Route Infinie is a road in the Bas-Saint-Laurent that I photographed from the roadside while waiting for a car to stop, after the trek. I hitchhiked to Tadoussac, crossed the St. Lawrence, came back via the south shore.

The series built itself around silence and vastness. No cities, no crowds. A few human figures, tiny in the landscape: a silhouette facing the open sea from Gaspésie, a chair on a cliff watching the St. Lawrence disappear into mist. These are images of presence, not action. Being there was enough.