Photo: loscil | MUTEK Montréal 2019

Every August, an electric current runs through Montréal, as pulses of light, ripples of electronic sound, and thousands of festivalgoers flood the city’s downtown core during MUTEK Festival.

Whether you’re on site as a performer, devout audiophile, or photographer trying to capture visual lightning in a bottle, it’s an experience near impossible to convey through words alone.

Below, longtime MUTEK photographer Bruno Aïello-Destombes shares the stories and techniques behind transforming the flash-in-the-pan moments and pulses of artist-audience synergy into singular slices of magic.

Q&A with Bruno Aïello-Destombes

How would you describe your photographic style? What influences or approaches shape your work?

Light is what guides my approach above all else, and during the festival light appears in many forms. Sometimes it’s even the absence of light that pushes you to find solutions.

I remember one time when I used an emergency exit sign as the background to create a silhouette of the artist. It was the only available light source! Another memorable moment was Robert Henke's performance, which featured a laser installation. It was absolutely stunning to the naked eye, but the lasers' scanning frequency made it impossible to capture the experience as it appeared. So I decided to use a long exposure, allowing the laser beams to imprint themselves onto my images. At the time, I was using a zoom lens, which let me take the technique even further by zooming during the long exposure. The result was incredible: repeating patterns created by the lasers that transformed the scene into something entirely new.

What kinds of moments draw you in the most? Is it composition, emotion, timing, or something else that inspires you to capture a scene?

One of the things I enjoy most is finding the technique that will allow me to elevate the performances being presented, for example, a slow shutter during Ash Fure’s performance. It helps create surreal images where emotion takes precedence.

How do you balance artistic approach with documentary perspective when photographing MUTEK?

My photographic approach in this context is both documentary and artistic. It's documentary because the goal is to faithfully capture the artist's proposal, but also what it evokes in the audience. To me, it's through emotion that artistic sensitivity serves the documentary.

Whenever I photograph MUTEK, there's always a moment when I question my abilities. It's without a doubt one of the most challenging environments I've ever worked in, and that's true for every single performance. But I think that's exactly what keeps me coming back.