Clara Gutsche: The Convent Series

Curated by France Gascon, Clara Gutsche: The Convent Series comprised of sixty-five photographs in both color and black-and-white of Gutsche’s recent work. The show was a photographic study of the monastic life of cloistered nuns in Quebec.

Based in Montreal since 1970, Gutsche was one of Canada's most accomplished contemporary photographers, but she was virtually unknown in the United States. Taken inside convents in the province of Quebec, Gutsche's images allowed the viewer a rare glimpse of these religious communities. At least twenty-five convents, most of them cloistered, opened their doors to the artist and her camera during the last decade. Gutsche pictured an ordered, feminine world devoted to prayer and contemplation. The artist's examination of her subject was simultaneously distant and highly emphatic, and the cumulative effect of her project was remarkable both in the wealth of revealed detail and in its emotional intensity.

The catalogue for this exhibition is out-of-print.

^{The exhibition was organized by the Musée d'art de Joliette in Joliette, Quebec, where it was presented from October 18, 1998, to January 10, 1999. It also traveled to the Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia (February–March).}