''The Unknown Photographer'' (French: ''Le photographe inconnu'') is a 2015 Quebec

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...

work based around found photographs of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, co-produced by the digital production agency Turbulent and the

National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary f ...

's French-language Digital Studio, both located in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

. The lead artists on the project were Loïc Suty (director, sound designer, scriptwriter), Osman Zeki (lead developer, 3D modeler) and Claudine Matte (art director). The work was produced by Claire Buffet and Louis-Richard Tremblay, with executive producers Marc Beaudet, Benoit Beauséjour and

Hugues Sweeney Hugues Sweeney is head of French-language interactive media production at the National Film Board of Canada, based in Montreal. Sweeney's recent credits include ''My Tribe Is My Life'', the online interactive animation work, ''Bla Bla'', ''Rouge au ...

Background

''The Unknown Photographer'' is an immersive experience based around almost 300 photographs of World War I, which Montreal director Philippe Baylaucq found as a teenager in 1974, in an abandoned house in

Morin Heights Morin-Heights is a town in the Laurentian Mountains region of Quebec, Canada. It is west of Saint-Sauveur and north of Lachute; municipally, it is within the Regional County Municipality of Les Pays-d'en-Haut. It is primarily a tourist town, ha ...

, north of Montreal. Years later, Baylaucq passed the photos on to a friend, photographer Bertrand Carrière, who used them as the basis for a photo exhibition, ''Lieux Mêmes'', as well as a short documentary, ''Finding Fletcher Wade Moses''. For over 10 years, Carrière had tried to find some trace of what happened to the owner of the photo collection, without success.

User experience

''The Unknown Photographer'''s VR experience involves a walk through a kind of "surrealist museum," exploring these World War I photographs. The production offers users three possible narratives, accompanied by spoken word passages on the horrors of war, written by novelist

Catherine Mavrikakis Catherine Mavrikakis (born January 7, 1961) is a Canadian academic and award-winning writer living in Quebec. The daughter of a Greek father who grew up in Algeria and a French mother, she was born in Chicago and grew up in Anjou, Montréal-Nord ...

, narrated in English by Julian Casey and in French by

François Papineau François Papineau (born 24 December 1966) is a Canadian actor who worked in stage and the Cinema of Quebec for over 25 years. Papineau graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in 1990. He was nominated for the Genie Award for Best ...

. The experience lasts 20 to 50 minutes, depending on the choices users make.

Release

''The Unknown Photographer'' premiered at the

Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal The Montreal International Documentary Festival (french: Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal) is a Canadian documentary film festival, staged annually in Montreal, Quebec. In English, the festival now goes by the name Montreal I ...

on November 13, 2015. It had its U.S. premiere in the New Frontier section of the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

and its European premiere at the

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is the world's largest documentary film festival held annually since 1988 in Amsterdam. Over a period of twelve days, it has screened more than 300 films and sold more than 250,000 tic ...

. At the

2016 Webby Awards The 20th annual Webby Awards for 2016 was held at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City on May 16, 2016, which was hosted by comedian and actor Nick Offerman. The awards ceremony was streamed live on the Webby Awards website. Judges from the Intern ...

, ''The Unknown Photographer'' won the People's Voice award in the Online Film & Video/VR: Gaming, Interactive or Real-Time category.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Unknown Photographer, The Virtual reality works National Film Board of Canada works World War I in popular culture Works about war photography Found object Webby Award winners