Over the course of the last forty years, Bertrand Carrière has produced a body of photographic work that is at once both extremely personal and highly varied. His explorations of the medium have taken two directions. The first follows a documentary route encompassing both landscape and portraiture in order to probe memory and history, the resulting images an attempt to give voice to things that have none, and are slipping out of our sight. His other approach, more personal, is characterized by an openness of view, an attentiveness to intractable signs. There Carrière explores reality for its autobiographical resonance. Whether displayed on walls, in public spaces, or in the pages of books, his works unfold in series that show the narrative relationships and connections forged between the images he creates.
Bertrand Carrière has been the recipient of grants from both the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. His work has been shown in Québec, Canada, Europe and China. He directed the 2004 documentary film 913 on the photographic installation he created to commemorate the Raid on Dieppe, and was awarded the 2005 Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec's Prix de la création for the region of Montérégie.
He has also put together a number of books, notably those published by Les 400 coups: Témoin de l'ombre : photographies de tournage (1995), Voyage à domicile (1997), Signes de jour (2002), Hivers (2003), and Dieppe : paysages et installations (2006), which received that year's LUX Award for Best Book of Photographs. L'Instant même published his work Lieux mêmes and Centre Sagamie Ground Level, both in 2010. His most recent series of works, Après Strand, was exhibited in 2011 at the Musée régional de Rimouski, which published an accompanying catalogue. In the same year, his photographs were used to illustrate Georges Leroux's book Wanderer : essai sur le Voyage d'hiver de Franz Schubert, published by Éditions Nota Bene and awarded the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-fiction.
Bertrand Carrière's photographs are included in many public and private collections, among them those of the Cirque du Soleil, Alcan, Canada Council Art Bank, Bibliothèque nationale de Paris, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Cinémathèque québécoise, Loto-Québec, National Gallery of Canada, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in Texas.
He has published several books of his photographs, includingLe Capteurin 2015, published by Editions du Renard, and Solstice in 2020, a monograph retracing more than 40 years of his work, published by Editions Plein-Sud. In 2023,Une poignée d'étoileswill be published by Editions Loco in Paris.
Bertrand Carrière holds a master's degree in communications from the Université du Québec à Montréal. He has taught photography at Cégep André-Laurendeau and Université de Sherbrooke.
His work is represented in Montreal by Galerie Simon Blais and in Paris by Agence VU. Born in Ottawa in 1957, he lives and works in the Eastern Townships.
