On the periphery of Montreal’s ceaseless new construction, the traces of its industrialized past still linger in the urban landscape. Factories or bygone wastelands have stood for decades, immense abandoned vestiges that resist time and the threat of demolition. Since the 1990s, Daniel Hausmann has observed these shifting sites and invested in them performative actions, giving an account of the life that is peculiar to them. His meticulous gaze, poring over the details and the essence of each place, attends to the lived realities of those who pass through or settle there.

With their precarious brick walls, their cement barriers, steel beams, and grounds contaminated or covered in litter, these sites that could be regarded as hostile conceal many presences. Hausmann’s photographic work has shown how, over the years, these transitory zones have steadily come to be appropriated: bodies that were once passing by or fence hopping soon dare to move indoors, creating a dialogue with these places through gestures, whereas others manage to make shelters of them. Hausmann’s full days spent on location are revealed through moments and light, conversing with time as it has settled on the stones.

Daniel Hausmann would like to thank François Bloch, Normand Rajotte, Hélène Gagnon, Janet Seding, Gail Wiseman, Jocelyn Philibert, Serge Clément, Michel Campeau, Shulim Rubin, Paul Cowan, Lili Michaud, Hughes Charbonneau, Helen Malkin, Judy Garfin, Bertrand Carrière, Yan Giguère, Louise Bloom, Suzanne Arsenault, Steve Kellar, Benoit Aquin, Maxime Rheault, and Louis Lussier, Pierre Bédard, Ewa M Zebrowski, Mona Hakim.