Montreal's Nathalie Daoust is bringing her haunting and eerily real photography to London with her exhibit “Frozen in Time, Switzerland.”

Prepare to be transported into a fantastical vision of the country that is both dreamy and chilling.

The project, which is showing at the Forest City Gallery until May 21, was created as part of an artist residency program. Before arriving in Switzerland, Daoust had many ideas outlined for what she wanted to do — except none of them ended up having anything to do with her final product.

She was actually unexpectedly inspired by a trip to the Alps, a place she previously just brushed off as a tourist attraction.

“Once we got there, I was stunned by its surrealism, beauty and (the) eerie feeling it gave me,” said Daoust, in an email from Berlin. “It was a mix of happiness and freedom, at the same time sadness and entrapment.”

“I felt I needed to let these feelings out by capturing these emotions on film.”

The photos with their hazy, steam-off-the-water look are lovely, even with the slightly offbeat image of a girl face down in a haystack, rear end upwards, or lying languidly on a fence.

There's also a slightly sexual element to the photos — partially attributed to the ideas of diversions and fantasy that permeate much of Daoust's work.


“Many of my projects have to do with places of ‘escapement,' and the people who work for this,” she said, using the example of her latest project “Tokyo Hotel Story,” which features one of the largest S&M “love hotels” in Japan and the women who work in it.

“I guess I am curious...all these fantasy worlds created for sex. How do the women that work there deal with these places? Why do they do this? Is it bad? Good? For them? Society?” she said.

While “Frozen in Time” isn't explicitly looking at ideals surrounding sex and society, it encompasses the escapism and the themes of “acceptance...not sure if its more for me than others,” that she says is also often prevalent in her projects.

Always looking to explore different concepts and places, and “not just look it up on Wikipedia,” Daoust also seeks out a variety of ways to present her visions.

With “Frozen in Time,” she hand-printed the images in a black and white darkroom, manipulated them at the printing stage, and hand-coloured them.

For her “Tokyo Girls” project — she made lenticular prints, which creates an illusion of depth.

“The main reason I do all these manipulations is because the raw photo never feels or looks like the image I saw when I took it,” she explained. “I want it to represent as closely how I felt and what I saw, (so) I manipulate it until it becomes my reality — my memory of the moment.”

This altered state makes her photographs, particularly in “Frozen in Time,” look more like art than true depictions of a situation — but it only adds to the lasting impression she hopes her pictures have to the London audience.

“I just hope it moves something in them — that they like the images or not. It is a very personal project that deals with something deep inside me,” she said.

For more information on Nathalie Daoust, check out her exhibit at the Forest City Gallery, or visit her online at http://daoustnathalie.com.