What is reborn every morning

Claude Gauthier
3 days ago
4 min read

Preface

In Jean-Marie Mino's daily routine, there is something that transcends habit, touching upon the realm of inner struggle. His daily ascent of Mount Royal becomes the peaceful affirmation of a life taken in hand, a life that rejects passivity and chooses presence over withdrawal. This repetition is anything but automatic: it stems from patient introspection, a gentle strength, a silent dialogue between body and mind.

Jean-Marie transformed this approach into a photographic project: every day, in the same place, he captures a scene from nature, always the same one. As a photographer, I immediately recognized the artistic and symbolic value of this approach.

Like the cycle of life, each day offers a renewed poem. The seasons reinvent the landscape, the light redraws the contours, and Jean-Marie welcomes these minute variations with an almost ritualistic attentiveness. It is neither a feat nor a performance, but a quiet, humble blossoming, where consistency becomes a form of freedom. It is also a physical battle he must wage, an effort he imposes upon himself despite the pain, the constraints of daily life, and the insidious pull of inertia.

For Jean-Marie, perseverance transforms into poetry, a poetry that he conveys through his photographs, where nature reflects, through the seasons, this dialogue between resilience, patience and light.

Claude Gauthier

Time as tested by observation

Every morning, Jean-Marie leaves his house on Mentana Street and begins the same ascent. Step by step, he climbs Mount Royal, whether snow weighs down the branches or summer light gilds the maple tops. For 2,648 consecutive days, he repeated this gesture, without calculation or ostentation. It is not a sporting feat, but a discipline of observation. For him, walking is breathing in rhythm with the world, letting his breath harmonize with the whisper of the mountain.

Cette mosaïque se lit de gauche à droite et représente sept ans de photographies capturées par Jean-Marie au sommet du Mont-Royal. Chaque saison est illustrée par une couleur distinctive : le bleu pour l'hiver, le vert pâle pour le printemps, le vert pour l'été et le rouge pour l'automne. On découvre ainsi toute la singularité du projet de Jean-Marie, magnifiquement exprimée dans cette composition.

At the summit, he continues his journey towards Beaver Lake. There, in the same spot, he raises his camera. A photograph, always the same, yet never identical. The seasons glide across the image, the light shifts, the shadows dance. What he captures is not the landscape, but the fragile moment when reality transforms into perception. Each click is a meditation, a way of learning to see the same thing differently.

Photography here becomes an art of recommencement. As with Michael Kenna or Hiroshi Sugimoto, repetition reveals the depth of time. What is repeated is not commonplace: it is the world itself, ever the same, ever new. The fixed framing becomes an anchor point around which the metamorphoses of light unfold. The consistency of the gesture opens the door to an infinite number of variations.

But behind this visual ritual lies another story: that of the body and its resilience. Each climb demands effort. Muscles protest, knees remind us of their fragility, breath becomes shorter. Yet, Jean-Marie continues. This daily journey becomes an act of resilience, a way of remaining present in the world. The walk is prayer, the photograph is proof. Proof that he is still there, facing the ever-changing beauty of the day.

Over the years, the series has transformed into a work of art: 2,648 images of the same place, 2,648 ways of capturing light. This body of work forms a kind of journal of constancy, a photographic writing where each image becomes a syllable of a long, silent poem. Mount Royal, in this context, is no longer simply a relief of stone and trees: it becomes an inner territory, a space for dialogue between humankind and time.

Jean-Marie's approach is striking in its simplicity and perseverance. It reminds us that art sometimes arises not from the spectacular, but from fidelity to a humble and repeated gesture. By photographing the same landscape every day, he doesn't seek to capture nature, but to enter into a relationship with it, to recognize his own existence within the rhythm of the seasons. The landscape becomes a mirror, the mountain becomes the master.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFmX8pNyb04

Comments by Jean-Marie Mino

I have known Claude Gauthier since 2010.

He kindly lent me a space on his website, where he recounts my story poetically and arranges the images harmoniously. In April 2017, I was hit by a vehicle while crossing a pedestrian crossing: I broke my ankle and my knee cartilage was compressed. I underwent two surgeries.

Unfortunately, in the same year, I suffered a rupture of the vein supplying the brain, leaving me hemiplegic.

Obviously, I was ready to do anything to avoid remaining in that state. Ultimately, I regained all my functions, and for that, I want to thank the medical teams whose exercises enabled me to recover my full abilities.

Having always loved walking, I decided to hike Mount Royal along the Olmsted Trail every day, early in the morning. Before reaching Beaver Lake, I stop to take the same photo.

It's a journey into the past of at least seven years.