Woman with Camera features poems inspired by the life and photography of Diane Arbus.

‘The camera is cruel, so I try to be as good a person as I can to make things even.’
~ Diane Arbus

‘A photograph printed in a magazine. A self-portrait, a woman partially nude, standing in front of a bed, beside her camera on a tripod. The pose is audacious; the contrast between the softness of the gaze and the whiteness of her boyish underwear is troubling. With this introduction to the world of Diane Arbus I snapped.’
~ Corinne Larochelle

‘Larochelle’s tone is spot on; adopting the photographer’s eye, she creates the proper distancing that permits her to capture the subjects’ decisive moment. Femme avec caméra (Woman with Camera) succeeds as a literary genre. This collection of poems abounds in snapshots free of exaggerated sharpness and linearity when exploring a photographer’s biography and that of the lives of those photographed.’
~ Jacques Paquin

‘Who is this woman with a camera, wandering through the streets of New York city, running after the most perilous of dreams and searching for a self-portrait in mirrors on fire? She adjusts her viewfinder as though she were another person – she is other, multiplying with word and silence her chances of catching butterflies: the vagrancies and secrets of a fragile childhood.’
~ Élise Turcotte

Born in Three-Rivers, Quebec, Corinne Larochelle has published six books of poetry and a first novel, Le parfum de Janis (2015). She works and lives in Montreal.

The translator, Antonio D’Alfonso, is a writer and filmmaker who has lived in Toronto and Montreal.