ART-UP XIX: THEN & NOW – AMINA JALABI

Neighborhoods are like people. They change, evolve, age and even reincarnate. My photography project “Then and Now” is about the change of the Pointe St-Charles neighborhood through its residents. I interviewed 3 senior residents. we talked about their memories of the Pointe. I took pictures of them and then photoshopped their photos when they were children in the same photo I took of them. My first interviewee is Mr. Jean Guy Dutil, a member of the group that founded the senior building in which he lives “ la Cité des Bâtisseurs”. It is a social building for seniors with affordable rents. Mr. Dutil has a unique perspective about the gentrification in the Pointe. He seems not to mind the new condominium projects. However, he stresses on the point of mixing social units within the renovated spaces. He says: we can’t stop renovations but we have the power to come together and make sure that residents of lower incomes don’t feel segregated and are an integral part of the Pointe. My second and third interviewees were Mme. Lucie Lalande and Mme Micheline Galarneau. We talked about their memories of the Pointe. They both showed me a lot of pictures of their families and I had the honor to feel like i visited the Pointe in the past through these pictures. The final results of their actual photos photoshopped with their photos as children turned out to be really reflective and evocative of historical emotions without practicing “ruin porn” as discussed in High’s essay “ Beyond Aesthetics”.This project was inspired by two photographer who did projects on the meaning of now and then: Flora Borsi who did a project on the city of Detroit and Tom Hussey who is an award winning photographer who did a photo series of elderly people looking pensively at their reflections in the mirror.