{"id":352,"date":"2026-04-29T12:52:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T16:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.normandrajotte.com\/en\/?page_id=352"},"modified":"2026-06-04T12:14:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T16:14:04","slug":"in-the-eye-of-the-beaver","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.normandrajotte.com\/en\/in-the-eye-of-the-beaver\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Eye of the Beaver"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\"><div id=\"tdi_1\" class=\"tdc-row\"><div class=\"vc_row tdi_2  wpb_row td-pb-row\" >\n<style scoped>\n\/* custom css - generated by TagDiv Composer *\/\n\n\/* custom css - generated by TagDiv Composer *\/\n.tdi_2,\r\n                .tdi_2 .tdc-columns{\r\n                    min-height: 0;\r\n                }.tdi_2,\r\n\t\t\t\t.tdi_2 .tdc-columns{\r\n\t\t\t\t    display: block;\r\n\t\t\t\t}.tdi_2 .tdc-columns{\r\n\t\t\t\t    width: 100%;\r\n\t\t\t\t}.tdi_2:before,\r\n\t\t\t\t.tdi_2:after{\r\n\t\t\t\t    display: table;\r\n\t\t\t\t}\n<\/style><div class=\"vc_column tdi_4  wpb_column vc_column_container tdc-column td-pb-span12\">\n<style scoped>\n\/* custom css - generated by TagDiv Composer *\/\n\n\/* custom css - generated by TagDiv Composer *\/\n.tdi_4{\r\n                    vertical-align: baseline;\r\n                }.tdi_4 > .wpb_wrapper,\r\n\t\t\t\t.tdi_4 > .wpb_wrapper > .tdc-elements{\r\n\t\t\t\t    display: block;\r\n\t\t\t\t}.tdi_4 > .wpb_wrapper > .tdc-elements{\r\n\t\t\t\t    width: 100%;\r\n\t\t\t\t}.tdi_4 > .wpb_wrapper > .vc_row_inner{\r\n\t\t\t\t    width: auto;\r\n\t\t\t\t}.tdi_4 > .wpb_wrapper{\r\n\t\t\t\t    width: auto;\r\n\t\t\t\t    height: auto;\r\n\t\t\t\t}\n<\/style><div class=\"wpb_wrapper\" >[vc_column_text css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb](Text published in <a href=\"https:\/\/cielvariable.ca\/numeros\/ciel-variable-99-habitat\/normand-rajotte-le-chantier-caroline-loncol-daigneault-dans-loeil-du-castor\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>CV99<\/em><\/a>, 2015)\r\n<h3>In the Eye of the Beaver<\/h3>\r\n<strong>Caroline Loncol Daigneault<\/strong>\r\n\r\n<em>Le Chantier<\/em>: the first image. Through marks and lines \u2013 green, taupe, orange \u2013 a wet woodlands glistens. In the foreground, three black tree trunks. The one in the centre is cut open at the base, showing freshly gnawed yellow flesh. It partially hides a pile of branches arranged in an outwardly spreading form \u2013 the key, the sun of the image. Then, other photographs. A forest with a stretch of snowy water; a composition carved out by a rivulet; bleached branches floating on a black background. The heavy, the angular, the spongy, the abundant, the shiny, the volatile: phenomena stemming from a central point. A beaver dam.\r\n\r\nBut let\u2019s go back a bit. For thirty years, Normand Rajotte has been casting his attentive gaze at nature, and for almost twenty years he has been meandering through the bends and folds of this very forest. Abandoning the social approach that he had adopted in the 1970s \u2013 notably with <em>Transcanadienne sortie 109<\/em><sup>1<\/sup>, a photo essay on the daily life in a working\u00adclass city \u2013 he acquired a plot of land in the Eastern Townships in 1997, and it became his preferred territory of investi\u00ad gation. His photographic series have evocative titles, giving a glimpse of the tonality and movements of a private, intuitive practice: <em>Comme un murmure, Marcher sa trace, Entrer dans\u2028les terres, Des apr\u00e8s\u00admidi sans bruit, Dans les coins oubli\u00e9s, \u00e0 la recherche des dieux tranquilles<\/em>. Exoticism, he says, does not interest him. Neither the deserts and canyons of Arizona nor the warm climes of Spain where he has worked \u2013 although present in Marcher sa trace \u2013 have given him the feeling that he is an essential part of the landscape. The work that he produces is intended to be as close as possible to the forest that he is constantly observing. Without trying to domesticate it, he tames it; he detects its nuances and transformations; he glimpses its depth and complexity. In doing this, he learns about the animals, insects, and plants on the territory he occupies and of which he has become a part. He even speaks of a sort of \u201chistory\u201d of the place and its inhabitants. The feral lens of his camera is on the lookout for any signs around him, but also within him. Simply, without technical artifices, he turns away from distant horizons. The result is images that may show a bit of sky but are focused closely on mud, peat, undergrowth. His eye glued to the ground, he scrutinizes organic materials, mineral materials, water that stagnates or trickles away. He knows that everything \u2013 life, death \u2013 plays out exactly here.\r\n\r\nRajotte describes the path of his aesthetic progress as a spiral. He loops around to revisit the same sites, the same subjects, without ever completely becoming habituated to them, still and always drawn to deflected perspectives. And yet, after three decades of photographing the forest without a particular point of attachment, by chance as he walked, he found rising water, and a dam. His work became active, mysteriously drawn back in the branches. It was gradually catalyzed by the work of the beavers, which became the focus, rejuvenation, and transformation of his practice. His camera, up to then turned to the ground, tipped horizontally and pulled back, opening a greater depth of field. Fran\u00e7ois Jullien wrote in a meditation on Chinese painting that \u201cin contemplating a landscape from afar, we capture its lines of life [whereas] considering it from close up, we grasp its substance<sup>2<\/sup>.\u201d Two regimes of the gaze seem to cohabit here in the same site.\r\n\r\nRajotte spent three years documenting the beaver dam that he discovered some four hundred feet from his house. He captured the effects of the beavers\u2019 presence on the land, from the most obvious to the subtlest signs. Although we are familiar with images of habitations, the living spaces of civilizations, the images that we have of these animals\u2019 dwellings are enigmatic; they are difficult to find as they are almost swallowed up in the landscape. One might say that beavers are, after human beings, the first animals to modify their environment on a very large scale. In fact, they do more than inhabit the land; they incubate a complete ecosystem \u2013 generate and maintain a living environment. Nothing less. In the beavers\u2019 presence, bodies of water are created; surrounding fauna and flora are complexified; forest humus is enriched with the debris that are gathered (dead leaves, needles, pollen, flowers). Furthermore, they can change the flow and level of water, even redirecting and redesigning streambeds. Literally, they help to model the morphology and composition of landscapes. Through their activity, a point in the forest comes alive and takes on a hundred moving faces.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nFor a photographer such as Rajotte, who likes to bring into his images moments of ambiguity and transition, the arrival of beavers on his land was not trivial. It meant more than a new subject to capture on film. These animals, as agents of transformation, brought him \u201cactions\u201d to contem\u00ad plate: a collection of metamorphoses, births, sublimations, deaths, and rebirths. Behind the static, mute appearance of the images, a multitude of dynamic details is assembled. Delicately, a world is being structured: a tree bends in on itself, and a tiny layer of snow is deposited on its ripped bark; below, red needles slide on muddied water; nearby, moss and arched branches form a binding texture. The description could be expanded to inventory echoes and chords bearing witness to the improbable cohesion of the elements. No matter; Rajotte\u2019s photographs are already full of this and more; they point to the precarious balance of phenomena connected, from near or far, to the site. Making himself a \u201cspokesperson,\u201d to use philosopher \u00c9tienne Souriau\u2019s term, his photographs plead \u201cin favour of their beauty<sup>3<\/sup>.\u201d\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nAlthough the presence of the beavers bears its share of collateral \u201cbeauties,\u201d it does not come without collateral damage. Inevitably, the owners of neighbouring lots would like to have the dam dismantled. Yet, to preserve cohabitation, Rajotte intervenes, becomes invested. In addition to making breaches in the structure, he has installed an overflow pipe. He becomes close to the beavers\u2019 work, even participates in it. He places one branch vertically, another horizontally, and another one diagonally; he plugs holes with roots and mud: the beavers\u2019 technique is revealed to him. Obviously, the \u201cprecarious balance\u201d mentioned above does not concern only the evanescence of visual phenomena. It also describes an area of photographic research closely overlapping an area of anonymous life. Both can be sensed at the surface of <em>Le Chantier<\/em>.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nRajotte insists on a zone of ambiguity, a mystery that he does not solve. When he enters the \u201csecret\u201d of the dam, like that of the image, he embraces the point of view of what he is photographing. This is where everything is tied together \u2013 existing and making exist \u2013 in a reciprocal construction. Sensing them as creation, Rajotte amplifies the visibility of phenomena that flow from the labour of the beavers, substances and lifelines. Could it be that he finds in these subjects half\u00adsubmerged under the water a scansion of light and darkness that would return him to the roundabout of photography? As if, perhaps, to the eye of his own spiral.\r\nTranslated by K\u00e4the Roth \u2014\u2014\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li><em>Transcanadienne Sortie 109<\/em> was produced in collaboration with Jean Lauzon and Pierre Rondeau, published by \u00c9ditions Ovo in 1978. There are indirect ties between\u2028this inaugural project undertaken in Drummondville and Le chantier. Both series evince a \u201cworking\u00adclass impulse\u201d enlivening a visual world. Whereas Transcanadienne shows the different facet of a city through its actors, its tradespeople \u2013 hairdresser, shopkeeper, auctioneer, seamstress, and others \u2013 Le chantier preserves the anonymity of the actors \u2013 the engineers \u2013 of the site.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Fran\u00e7ois Jullien, <em>La propension des choses. Pour une histoire de l\u2019efficacit\u00e9 en Chine<\/em> (Paris: \u00c9ditions du Seuil, 1992), 89 (our translation).<\/li>\r\n \t<li>\u00c9tienne Souriau formulated a philosophy of art in which he posits the \u201ctestimonial\u201d nature of creativity. \u201cFor Souriau, creating is, above all, testifying. Each creator of existence [or of an artwork] testifies in favour of what he creates in the manner of a pro domo plea.\u201d David Lapoujade, \u201c\u00c9tienne Souriau. <em>Une philosophie des existences moindres<\/em>,\u201d in Philosophie des possessions, ed. Didier Debaise (Dijon: Presses du r\u00e9el, 2011), 193 (our translation).<\/li>\r\n \t<li><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\u2014\u2014\r\n\r\n<b>Caroline Loncol Daigneault <\/b>is an author, curator, and researcher. Her interest in environmental issues inspired her master\u2019s thesis in art studies (UQAM, 2011). In continuity with this work, in 2013\u201314, choreographer Tedi Tafel and the Vaste et Vague centre invited her to be a recording author for a project with local Mi\u2019gmaq communities. In 2012, she was curator of the Biennale de sculpture de Saint\u00adJean\u00adPort\u00adJoli with the theme of hospitality, and then of ELLE MARCHE blue mountain, an exhibition with artist Vida Simon.[\/vc_column_text]<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[vc_column_text css=\"\"](Text published in CV99, 2015) In the Eye of the Beaver Caroline Loncol Daigneault Le Chantier: the first image. Through marks and lines \u2013 green, taupe, orange \u2013 a wet woodlands glistens. In the foreground, three black tree trunks. The one in the centre is cut open at the base, showing freshly gnawed yellow [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-352","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.normandrajotte.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.normandrajotte.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.normandrajotte.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.normandrajotte.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.normandrajotte.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.normandrajotte.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":471,"href":"https:\/\/www.normandrajotte.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/352\/revisions\/471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.normandrajotte.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}