Hochelaga – Evolving Montreal

From July 12 to September 10, 2023, extend your visit to the neighbourhood to discover these works! Presented in dialogue with the exhibition on display at the McCord Stewart Museum, this collaborative community project is rooted in Bibliothèque Maisonneuve and 7 local businesses and can be visited when you’re in the Montreal neighbourhood.

From October 28, 2023 to January 25, 2024, the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough’s invites you to extend your discovery of the exhibition at the old Maisonneuve market. Part of the series will be presented in the central staircase area, depending on the opening hours.

From January 27 to April 25, 2024, the exhibition tour continues at the Francis-Bouillon arena, in the lobby. The project thus continues to take root in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district, and invites itself into a sports building.

Joannie Lafrenière holds degrees in journalism and photography. She is interested in all the captivating people who cross her path. Combining her anthropological curiosity with her love for humour, human beings and pop culture, she approaches documentary making as the art of encounter, and her camera as the tool for real connection.

Her previous films, The woman who saw the bear, Snowbirds, and King Lajoie, have been shown on television and in theatres around the world. She feels privileged to have recently completed Gabor, a documentary feature film about the oh-so-inspiring individual that is Gabor Szilasi.

Joannie lives, works and plays in Montreal and wherever life takes her.

Launched by the McCord Stewart Museum in 2019, the Evolving Montreal photographic commission program supports documentary projects that testify to the transformations of Montreal neighbourhoods through unique points of view.

“The idea behind Evolving Montreal was born from the conviction that the Museum should play a more active role, both in supporting the local photographic community and in building its own photography collection. The remarkable creativity and documentary value of the projects produced so far in the series are eloquent proof that encouraging contemporary photographers to capture the continuous transformation of the city is a fruitful undertaking.”
– Zoë Tousignant, Curator, Photography

Located in the south-east of the city, Hochelaga is steeped in a working-class and French-speaking past, and its population has played a major role in the city’s industrial development. Like other Montreal neighbourhoods, Hochelaga has rapidly transformed over the past few years. The vision of a popular Hochelaga is slowly fading away under the social and economic pressures of gentrification.

One of the exhibition spaces is dedicated to a photographic series by Yvon Lebeau and Lise Robichaud made in the late 1970s. Next to Joannie Lafrenière’s works, these photographs reveal the changes that have taken place in the neighbourhood over the past 50 years, but also show that residents have been able, despite the challenges, to preserve the soul of the neighbourhood.