"In the french part of Canada where I am from, nudity is not yet commonly accepted as an art form ( as far as photography is concerned). People associate nude bodies to sexuality and therefore don't want to be involved in this kind of artistic depiction. The few models who has posed nude for me are more "free-spirited" than most."

"As far as I am personally concerned, I see absolutely nothing wrong with nudity. In my mind, it is practically the same artistic statement as drawing, painting or sculpture. Photography makes it closer to real life than those art forms I named ... and that is where the photographer's talent come into action. it falls on his shoulder to give an aesthetic meaning and soul to his pictures in respect with the model's attributes and personnality."

Looking through Pierre's work, the singlemost thing that strikes you is the wide variety of work that he presents. Of course, for a professional photographer, one would expect to see many styles. However, it's very clear which images are for his own projects, and which are from assignments. I was stuck by the freshness of many of his portraits.

"Quebec city is a very small market compared to Montreal, Toronto or even New-York. Competition between photographers is fierce. My location helped as far as day to day subsistence was concerned...but I wasn't willing to relocate. The work load was quite heavy to maintain a decent living."

"I use mainly a journalistic/editorial approach to my photography. In that regard, I prefer "on-location" photoshoots. I've done some sessions in studios for fashion and illustration purposes but, in the long run, studio work is too "static" for my liking."

"One of the most important assignment of my photographic career was to take pictures of known-artists for a local producer. That meant going to 3 concerts per week for about a month and a half. I got to meet Zamphir the pan flute player."

While not only having his own website, Pierre is a frequent contributor to many of the forums worldwide. Unfortunately, this is where some of Pierre's trouble started. Like this month's featured model,Amy Harber, Pierre is very quick to assist young and aspiring models from falling for some of the more blatant scams targeted towards them. Soon after advising that a certain 'agency' was bogus, Pierre fell victim to a vendetta directed to destroying both his reputation and his business. Like Miss Harber, Pierre found postings on forums, supposedly by him. These were advertising for underaged models for adult work. Many models received emails that supposedly originated from him that were soliciting for work of very questionable taste (Pierre has started signing all his emails with a digital signature. If you receive an email from 'Pierre', check the signature to insure it really is from him). He also found himself targeted by this person as a 'child-molestor' and as the ringleader of an international child pornography ring. The character assassination is so fanatical, the originator has created hundreds of fictious free email accounts (all with the same originating IP address)to post this slander on several forums that were created just to extract revenge on Pierre. While there is no truth to any of these allegations (both the RMPC and the FBI have investigated), those who are not involved in the photography industry and do not know Pierre could assume that these allegations are true. Pierre was very closed-mouth about this topic during the interview, citing that there are ongoing investigations. However, anyone who has visited one of the many photography forums worldwide is aware of what the true story is. Pierre wouldn't comment if this hate-campaign had any influence on the drop in his business, only saying:

As said earlier, competition is fierce and customers are more and more difficult to please. Also, in some instance, collecting some payments was an horrendous task. Photography wasn't giving me the financial stability and security I was after so I decided to quit altogether full time professionnal photography. Now, I have leisure to select the most interesting assignments and cut-down on the most stressful ones. I help out aspiring models in my area with all the knowlege and equipment I have cumulated during those past years.

Pierre will continue to work on personal projects, and will keep up his participation on several of the forums he contributes to. It's very sad to see a very talented photographer leave the field full time, and even sadder to think that in the interest of protecting the innocent, Pierre has had to suffer. We give him our full support and hope that things resolve themselves in the very near future.

---

hmpc.tripod.com - Main Menu - hfmpc@yahoo.com