First, take two very different groups of people: immigrated teenagers from various backgrounds; and elderly, born and raised Montrealers. Then, bring them together. The outcome are colorful encounters – encounters filled with tenderness and humour, tears and laughters. Add to that the artist’s quirky eye and you get groovy portraits where fantasy meets personal experiences. Memories and ideas shared during the project became souvenirs of their own for everyone. 

The heteroclite and lively group got to know each other during numerous workshops led by drama teacher, Melissa Lefebvre. They shared intimate stories, talked about their lives, expressed their every emotions with no fear; they had formed a family. Matches were made between the youth and the elderly – the jokers, the sensitives, the exuberants, the poets -, and each team explored the highschool theater’s plentyfull dressing-room in search for outfits that would reveal the story of their relationship. 

What would they wear? Which atmosphere did they want to convey? Where would they be photographed? References and imagination spinned wildly as they had to create the set-up for their team portrait. With ease and fun, they became costumers, hair-stylists, producers, and mainly storytellers. Everyone’s ideas led to a creative aesthetic exploration, with playfulness, humour and complicity at its core. Age and roots were never an issue, they rather were the trigger to explore further. Following their whim, the budding performers turned modern-time adventurers, fox-trotters, hard-rockers, bookworms, gardeners, incarnating people from the 1930’s to the 2000’s in the most natural way. 

Though the participants’ lives and backgrounds seemed at first irreconcilable, each photo from Interwoven Roots reveals their bonding in warm colors. Brimful of details, a miror of the depth and power of human interactions, the series allows to grasp the social potential of collaboration between education and the arts.

Interwoven Roots is a project by high school drama teacher, Melissa Lefebvre, and photographer, Joannie Lafrenière. 

Special thank to Geneviève Desrosiers, Érika Essertaize and Yann Giraudet for their input in this project.

To see the short film directed by Paul Tom related to this project, its here:

https://vimeo.com/369923109