Jean-Yves Hamel

L’ARESTOP by Jean-Yves Hamel

Globalization has been the steaming topic of activists and academics in all socio-political fields for several years now. Questions relating to the environment, poverty, industrialization, wealth, and liberty continuously surface in the media as citizens take to the streets in an attempt to redress the ills of our globalized economies and political processes. Increasingly, we find parallel art forms that play a major role in the transmission of these ideas and emotions, reaching audiences in diversified contexts. Through the lens of his camera, and his skills in the darkroom, Jean–Yves Hamel, a Montreal based photographer, works on the premise that images are part of this process and so presents a series of black and white photomontages that strike and haunt by combining pictures and elements that are rarely seen juxtaposed, related, and interdependent. This unique and original series is entitled: L’ARESTOP, a hybrid word that combines the francophone expression for hitchhiking to the words “art” and “stop”.