Anton Bou
Canada
ARTIST BIO
A Canadian psychologist, Anton Bou playfully wished he were also a Mexican photographer. Accustomed to viewing his clinical work as an introspective process, he extends his research through an artistic practice grounded in extrospection: seeking to perceive human interiority — perhaps even to invent his own — by exploring the world outside. Moving across human interactions and distant geographies, he searches for sensitive forms that take shape in his photography and writing. Embracing the everyday, the accidental, and subtly constructed scenes, he is drawn to the unexpected resonances, frictions, and out-of-phase encounters between different planes — dynamics that reveal the vitality of psychic life.
His photographic work has been presented in festivals, juried exhibitions, and publications across North America, Europe, and Japan. In 2024, he inaugurated his first solo show in his hometown of Montreal. Since 2023, he has spent several months each year in Mexico City, his second home, a sprawling city whose intensity and tensions have become central to his artistic practice. In parallel, writing under a different name, he has been published in francophone humanities journals with a psychoanalytic orientation, as well as in literary collections.
PROJECT STATEMENT
What remains when the markers of self collapse?
Shivers…
Since the day of breaking, fragments of self have scattered, merging with the pulse of the world. Through photography, they are gathered, shaped, reshaped — only to slip away again.
"On a l’habitude de mourir, une fois de plus pourquoi pas" - we’re used to dying; once more, why not? sings La Bronze. Isn’t she singing of life as a constant wavering?
Held by a lingering tune, this series documents an unceasing metamorphosis — an inner experience with no predefined trajectory. At the same time, it traces an intimate shift : identity lived not as knowable features, but as a foundation for feeling.
Someone keeps seeking the core of identity…
…encountering pieces, and a wound.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that the Exposure Photography Festival is situated on land adjacent to where the Bow River meets the Elbow River. The traditional Blackfoot name of this place is “Moh’kins’tsis”, which we now call the City of Calgary. This is the traditional Treaty 7 territory of the Blackfoot confederacy: Siksika, Kainai, Piikani as well as the Îyâxe Nakoda and Tsuut’ina nations. It is home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 3 within the historical Northwest Métis homeland. We honour and acknowledge all Nations, who live, work and play in Moh’kins’tsis, help steward this land, and honour and celebrate this territory.