Hausmann's skies are penetrated by cranes, his waterways are caked with sludge and blocked by debris, his paved earth sprouts pilings and steel reinforcing bars. The human presence in this world is always seen in movement or as a shadow, an intimation of a life.

In traditional landscape and architectural photography, the artist may include a human figure to provide a sense of physical scale, the known body size compared to the unknown span of a bridge or height of a redwood. In Hausmann's work, that spatial scale is stretched longitudinally into time. We see it in the luminous blur of passing trains, the stolidly decaying masonry and ironwork, and the fragile mortality of people, who look more like ghosts or vagrants than masters in the world they have created.

These photographs witness the demolition of architecture, but their tonal delicacy and elegant contrasts of stillness and motion create a Montreal that's also a city of the imagination.

— Terence Byrnes
Associate Editor, Matrix

Dani Hausmann was born in 1948, in Caracas, Venezuela. In 1962 the family emigrated to Canada and settled in Montreal, where he began studies in architecture at McGill University, graduating in 1972. After several years in private practice, he became interested in film and started work as an assistant director, first at the National Film Board and later in the private sector. In 1979 he founded Casablanca Productions, a casting agency, where he collaborated on over 20 features with John Smith, Mort Ransen, Robin Spry, George Kaczender, and David Cronenberg, among others.

In the late 1980's he concentrated on location scouting for features and commercials and in the early 1990's he began to document the urban landscape.

He has long used photography as a tool and now brings together his background in both architecture and film to this on-going series.

His photographs appear in the current issues of Matrix and TOPO magazines.