For more than twenty years, Normand Rajotte has focused his attention on a few square kilometers of wooded area at the foot of Mont Mégantic near La Patrie, a village in southeastern Québec, Canada. He walks through this site, season after season, year after year, looking for signs of change; from the growth of vegetation to the traces left by animal activity.

Leaving aside prior research or documentation, his approach primarily focuses on careful observation. This intuitive practice has gradually led him to redefine his relationship to nature. Over time, an intimate bond has developed between him and this territory. The changes he observes in these places align with his own and are thus transposed into his work. Given the reoccurrence of this land in his practice, he is continuously challenged with renewing his gaze so as to remain open to what he encounters. Discoveries lead to others; new paths emerge as he continues his explorations. He becomes, in a way, the witness of the land and the guardian of the traces that he captures photographically.

“While he uses the landscape as an overarching theme, there is, in the subtleties of Rajotte’s work, an intimate and meditative dimension of the territory. It exists in the hollows of the surfaces and materials; whose representation goes far beyond the visible. We are no longer faced with the objective description of a landscape. Rather, we encounter its suggestive potential where mystery, strangeness, and discovery are articulated. This singular approach is most akin to that of the explorer. He depicts a perceptive experience that explores the finality in our own observations of things.”

– Mona Hakim, Art Historian.