other artists such as Ce ́zanne, Hopper, Beethoven,
and Bach.
He first exhibited in a traveling group show at
the National Film Board (now the Canadian Mu-
seum of Contemporary Photography) in Ottawa in
- In 1980, Bourdeau approached Jane Corkin,
a fledgling photography dealer in Toronto, to
represent him. As he recalls, Corkin’s energy and
intelligence immediately impressed him. Their rela-
tionship has lasted to this day, and has been instru-
mental in bringing Bourdeau’s photographs to the
attention of curators, writers and collectors, nation-
ally and internationally. In 1985, with Corkin tak-
ing care of sales and promotion, Bourdeau was able
to leave the job as an architectural technologist that
he had had since 1960 and was free to devote himself
entirely to photography.
During the summer months, Bourdeau travels
and makes photographs—he prefers the light of
long days—and during the winter, he prints and
researches locations for the next summer’s forays.
He has photographed extensively in Canada and
the United States, and in England, Sri Lanka,
Ireland, Scotland, Mexico, Costa Rica, on the
French-Spanish border, Germany, Luxembourg,
and France.
Mary Bourdeau,hiswife,an artistinher own right,
always accompanies him to help with the equipment
and provide a quiet working environment—Bour-
deau refers to her as both quartermaster and chief
grip—but also his companion. Bourdeau acknow-
ledges that he could never have accomplished what
he has without their artistic partnership.
Bourdeau does not set up his camera—an 8^00
1000 format Kodak Master View he bought in New
York for $150 in 1973 (before that he worked in 5^00
700 format)—until he has scouted the location and
intuited its potential for a successful photograph. He
determines the ‘‘station point,’’ the point at which
the visual, emotional, and spiritual come together
and shoots about 40 images, which Bourdeau then
wittles down to 15 or so final prints.
A Bourdeau photograph is unmistakable for its
print quality—what writer David Livingstone has
described as ‘‘soft greys, pearly whites and velvety
black.’’ Bourdeau has always gold-toned his prints
for a subtle warmth and added intimacy, and for its
composition, often a loss of scale and heightened
texture. His 8^00 1000 negatives are either contacted
or enlarged only slightly: impeccable presentation.
For Bourdeau, the subject of his photographs
often becomes secondary to his experience of photo-
graphing them, to the transcendence he seeks to
achieve while photographing. ‘‘The subject itself
becomes secondary to greater meanings—a univer-
sality,emotionalandspatialambiguities, andasense
of timelessness,’’ he wrote in January 1994. The
record of the subject is a by-product of the whole
experience. Undeniably, however, there are certain
sites Bourdeau has repeatedly sought out to find
those transcendent experiences.
When Bourdeau began to photograph, the land-
scape was all-consuming and he photographed
purely in the landscape for 15 to 20 years. In 1979,
he traveled to Sri Lanka and Ireland, and began
photographing Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, and
pre-Christian structures in addition to the land-
scape, as well as the visual interplay between struc-
ture and landscape.
Bourdeau also makes still life photographs—he
calls them small landscapes—for example, peaches
on a densely floral tapestry, or a field of small
white flowers, close-cropped, a tapestry in itself.
He has also made many portraits that have never
been exhibited.
In 1990, Bourdeau began the most important
work of his career to date. He started to photograph
abandonedanddisusedindustrialsites—steelplants,
coal mines, textile mills, quarries, ‘‘secular cathe-
drals’’ as he calls them—in Europe and North Ame-
rica, many of which have since been completely
dismantled. Of this work he wrote, in July 1998:These industrial sites are places that possess a power in
which I feel vulnerable, with a sense of ominous stillness
and qualities that transcend the specificity of time. These
are in a state of transition, transformation and possible
transcendence where order and chaos are in perpetual
altercation. I must emphasize that this is not a documen-
tary but a photographic and inner quest.These photographs carry clear threads from such
photographers as Margaret Bourke-White, Charles
Sheeler, and Germaine Krull. However, they
eschew the monumentality and drama of these
modernist images, just as they eschew the removed
typology of the work of his contemporaries Bernd
and Hilla Becher. Instead they carry what novelist
Anne Michaels has called an ‘‘elegiac’’ quality.
And in that sense, they are more akin to Berenice
Abbott’sChanging New Yorkproject, even though
Bourdeau’s intention is distinct from Abbott’s—
they are an homage to time passing, to place, and
to love. Paradoxically, theIndustrial Sitesphoto-
graphs are powerful both for their timelessness—
an important concept for Bourdeau—but also for
their timeliness.
Bourdeau has been the recipient of numerous
Canada Council grants, and was elected to the
Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) in 1983.
Bourdeau taught photography at the University ofBOURDEAU, ROBERT