iGallery 44 Centre for Contemporary PhotographyFashion District
From the Laurentian Highlands to a Higher Place
WOO SEE-MING photographs his late mother's Quebec village in the Laurentians, a pilgrimage in which time, sadness, love and joy collapse into one.
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The village priest refused to marry them. In the late 1950s WOO SEE-MING's mother, a French-speaking waitress in Quebec's Laurentian Highlands, fell for a Chinese cook she could barely talk to, so the couple moved to Montreal, where WOO was born some years later. Near the end of her life she wanted to see the village once more, and her health didn't allow it.
Shortly after her funeral he went in her place, and his 2025 photographs of the village are the core of this show. The artist's own site says they are combined with family archive images, so you move between the village today and the 1940s and 50s, the period in Quebec often called the Great Darkness.
No critic has reviewed it yet. It's in the Members' Gallery at Gallery 44, Suite 120 of 401 Richmond, free to enter, open Tuesday to Friday 11 to 5 and Saturday 12 to 5, until 7 November.
Look for
The church
Look for the village church that was central to his mother's life, photographed in and around in 2025.
The old paper factory
The partial ruins of the mill where WOO's grandfather worked from the 1910s to the 1960s.
The family cemetery
The graveyard where generations of WOO's ancestors are buried.
The house his mother was born in
Built by his great-grandparents with their own hands, and the house where his mother was born.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Locals Who've Seen It All
Also at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
8
- From the Laurentian Highlands to a Higher PlaceCourtesy of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography
- Returning to Ourselves: Rebecca Baird and Kenny Alvin Baird—A Retrospective of Art and Design by Cree Métis SiblingsPhoto by Luca Dichio
- Michael Massie: now and thenCourtesy of Fehely Fine Arts, photo by Renzo Fernandez
- Dawoud Bey: Material Histories, Living LandscapesCourtesy of Art Gallery of Ontario
- Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary PhotographyEWilson (Volunteer), Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- Art Gallery of OntarioOwen Byrne / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Campbell House MuseumJK Liu / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Textile Museum of CanadaRaysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0