Le beau, le laid et la photographie

A girls-only school, École L-Trichet is situated in Tetraultville, in Montreal East. Fifteen grade-one students, each about age 13, respond to two questions: What would be the most beautiful photograph in the world? What would be the most ugly photograph in the world? These static, black-and-white video portraits comprise an occasion to create artwork in which the stripping-away of the image opens up a place for these teenage voices. Between silence and hesitation—sometimes conventional, sometimes surprising—answers emerge. Recalling us to this age between childhood and adolescence, these reflections on beauty and ugliness invite us to consider the question of taste in its state of perpetual redefinition.