In May 2006, I visited the Center for Argentinian Canadian Studies in Buenos Aires and met its director, Ana Pfeiffer. She asked me if I was interested in showing some of my photos of water on the occasion of a scientific symposium that was to be held there the following October on the theme Espejo de agua, espejo de vida [Mirror of water, mirror of life]. She was familiar with my work which was then exhibited at the University of Belgrano and at the Manzana de las Luces.

I immediately accepted enthusiastically even if I knew that the symposium would last only two days. Many of the photographs exhibited in Buenos Aires contained elements of water; it would be easy for me to find some that would be suitable for the upcoming symposium.

My friend and partner, Adriana Ramponi, my alter ego at the other end of the Americas, the one who brings out and enhances the meaning of my images with her words, had also been invited to participate in the same symposium, but in a non-scientific capacity. She asked me if she could use my  photos as a source of inspiration for her paper. We had only met a few weeks before, but she already knew intuitively that something would come of all that.

I could not possibly imagine then that, by uniting our voices, we were embarking on a new collaboration, one that would tell, in pictures and words, the story of a truly American adventure, of the South and the North, the story of a river entitled Oh, River, Talk to Me, Sing to Me, Restore Me to Life.

The original exhibition of 23 photos, which is now a multi-media event, a poem with music and photographic illustrations, has been seen everywhere in Argentina, Chile and Quebec.

In 1967, I settled in Montreal, a floating island anchored in the middle of the Saint Lawrence, where almost half the population of Quebec lives.

An island is not quite dry land; it is a bit like a ship waiting to set sail.

I have always wavered between the wish to take root somewhere and the vital need to escape my insular limitations. And so, for many years now, I have been retracing the steps of those explorers who went up and down our river, which is like a great continental fissure or, as the Native Canadians used to call it, « the road that walks ».

Water is my natural environment : I am surrounded by it, I float upon it, I am both emprisoned and propelled by it. It was only natural that I should accumulate thousands of pictures of water in all its forms, taken here and elsewhere, the result of decades of capturing single moments.

The work that I do is presented on my Website and also in a wonderful site that features collections for education : World of Images.

François-Régis Fournier, January 2012.

The photographer

How  Oh river... came to me

Who am I?