The series resists nostalgia and spectacle. Instead, it lingers in the delicate threshold between disappearance and permanence, asking us to recognize meaning in what is fleeting, fragile, and nearly erased. CLUSTERS is less about ruins than about the persistence of memory, quietly insisting that forgotten spaces remain alive with stories.
CLUSTERS is a photographic series by an artist duo drawn to places marked by time and human presence. These spaces, quiet witnesses to lives once lived, carry a raw emotional charge. Since 2020, the duo has been carefully staging such locations, freezing fleeting moments and preserving a world on the edge of disappearance, before modernity wipes it away.
Their process begins with wandering and discovery. In forgotten buildings, worn interiors, and abandoned objects, the artist duo imagines the everyday lives that once unfolded there. From these traces, they construct scenes where characters seem caught mid-gesture, as if the camera arrived by chance. The resulting images tell intimate, understated stories, far removed from spectacle, reflecting a simple yet deeply meaningful way of life.
Each photograph is approached like a short film. Location scouting, casting, costumes, lighting, a small crew, set construction, and an intensive post-production phase all play a role in the making of each image. The technical process is demanding and precise: every final photograph is composed of roughly sixty individual shots, captured with a 150-megapixel sensor, allowing for an exceptional level of detail and clarity.
At its core, Clusters reflects on the memory of places and the fragile tension between what remains and what disappears. Moving fluidly between photography and cinema, the artist duo’s practice captures the fleeting presence of the human figure within spaces in transition, holding onto what quietly endures as time moves on.
Artist Website
An art director with a background in both commercial projects and film set decoration, she has worked across a wide range of Quebec and American productions. Her approach is hands-on and intuitive, often guiding the visual direction of projects from concept to execution. Most recently, she has been leading the design of the Musée Imaginarium, collaborating closely with several Montréal-based artists.
Trained in scenography, she has a natural sensitivity to space, light, and storytelling. This sensibility has also shaped her collaborations with Lucion, where she contributed to the design and installation of shadow-theatre works presented at international light festivals. Across mediums and contexts, her work is rooted in creating atmospheres that feel both immersive and deeply human.
Based in Montréal, André Turpin is a filmmaker whose practice spans directing, cinematography, and screenwriting. He has written and directed three feature films, Zigrail, Un crabe dans la tête, and Endorphine, as well as eight short films, each marked by a strong visual and emotional sensibility.
As a cinematographer, he has shaped the images of more than thirty films, collaborating closely with some of the most influential voices in contemporary cinema, including Denis Villeneuve, Xavier Dolan, Monia Chokri, and Philippe Falardeau. Known for his refined eye and deeply human approach to storytelling, Turpin’s work consistently balances intimacy with cinematic ambition.
