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Matinee: Helene Cyr
5 October 2019
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 312nd in our series of Saturday matinees today: Helene Cyr Photographer.
This 2:35 ACDSee Photographer Spotlight entry was produced by Wyatt Visuals using a Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro G2 with a Sigman 18-35mm zoom and a 50mm prime to profile Canadian photographer Helene Cyr.
She describes herself as "playful, observant, creative and friendly" and we think she's being modest. You'll see all of that in this video.
She studied Fine Arts and Photography at the Dawson Institute of Photography and worked as a photojournalist in Montreal in the 1990s before moving to Victoria.
Cyr has photographed over 250 weddings but that's not all she does. In fact, for this video, she visits Newfoundland for the first time.
She takes pictures, she explains, because it brings her "great joy" but also because it requires concentration. It's like writing a story in a split second, she says, a story that will have an impact beyond that split second for generations. "And nothing else does this," she adds.
Newfoundland's raw beauty provides not only a captivating landscape to explore but new human stories to tell. She finds a resilience and honesty about the people that helps explain their survival in that harsh landscape. "It's nothing like anything I've ever seen," she says.
She carries just one or two lenses, no flash, working "freely" so she doesn't overwhelm her subjects. Her photography is as natural and friendly as she is.
Luckily for us, the video includes her own stills from not just Newfoundland but also her entire career. We see the people she has captured with her camera enjoying their lives just the way they had imagined they might.
And that's just what she hopes for herself. That her future is full of more moments like these. Capturing one picture after another.
Not too much to ask. And just enough, really.