‘They all have something special’: Celine Dion shares her love of photography
One would never expect to see magnificent singer Celine Dion shopping just before midnight on a Saturday in Las Vegas. But, more notably, never in purple pajamas, neon sneakers and faux fur coat to guard against the chill.
“The fur is if we want to go out on the town, and the pajamas are if I want to go straight home to bed,” the mischievous The Colosseum at Caesars Palace headliner joked with me.
Celine’s brilliant backup vocalist Barnev Valsaint, who performs with her in the hit headliner concerts (they duet on “Beauty and the Beast”), was opening his first-ever collection of photographs at Carnevale Gallery at Caesars, and Celine promised to support it.
So there we were in a shopping arcade at the resort, and Celine was his first customer purchasing a stark black-and-white shot he’d taken one night during their summer tour in Europe. (Part of our chat at Caesars was posted Monday.)
As amazing as his photographs are, I was more incredulous at how quickly word spread that Celine was out shopping and hadn’t raced off home as normal by helicopter or limousine after her show. It took five security guards to eventually escort the 5’7” superstar safely through the crowds that appeared.
I’d seen Celine’s show 24 hours earlier, and her voice is the best it has ever been. It is strong and soars to the heavens. She is an angel of song. As usual, she had the crowd on their feet cheering and applauding.
She performed “The Power of Love,” the “Titanic” theme “My Heart Will Go On,” her cover of Queen’s “The Show Must Go On” and “Recovering,” which Pink wrote for her after the death of Celine’s husband and manager, Rene Angelil, one year ago. She was relaxed with the crowd and told delightfully intimate stories of her growing up the youngest of 14 children.
Although she said that it was a poverty-stricken home, it also was a happy one where everybody sang or played musical instruments for entertainment, as there was no television. She laughed that it always took a half hour or more to get her breakfast toast as the toaster in the kitchen of her parents, Therese and Adhemar, only had two slots to use at one time.
Being the youngest, Celine was always last for her two slices! Celine explained why she was out late night visiting the gallery: “We all have passions, and we’re family yet never really get to see each other after hours. This is my extended family, and to be together like this is wonderful.
“We do a sound check, we sing together and say, ‘See you tomorrow.’ And that’s pretty much it, but there’s much more love than that — it’s just because we have to do our job and move on to the next day.
‘Barnev has another passion’
“But in addition to his incredible singing, Barnev has another passion. When he first showed me his photos, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness.’ Then he told me they were going to be exhibited in an art gallery at Caesars. I’m pretty sure this is the first art gallery I’ve ever been able to go in!
“To put his marvelous talent on show to share with people is beautiful. I do love pictures, I do take pictures myself, a lot of my children, from sunrise to sunset. Unlike Barnev, though, when I have a day off on tour, I don’t explore as much, as he likes to shoot with this artistic discipline, this kind of passion that he’s got.
“I love all the pictures he’s taken because they all have something special, but from the first day that he showed me, something talked to me a lot about this one picture. This is not just, ‘OK, OK, I’m going to buy this picture and support you.”
I asked Celine what the picture had captured that had then captured her: “This picture for me is like with everything that’s been going on in my life in the last year, it’s been a tough road, but, luckily for me, I have had pillars supporting my soul, my heart, my tears, my strength, giving me strength, supporting me through the tough days.
“These pillars were one of the things that I felt so strong about the picture. I felt steady, I felt that I was embraced, I felt safe. I felt protected, and at the same time I did not feel that it was enclosed in a box.”
Celine continued: “I still have avenues, and my future is starting today. You have to look closer to see if it’s horses or angels or musicians in the background. I saw this angel and thought, ‘Angelil, my name from Rene.’ It was as if everything turned out to be in this picture was for me, even the lights when you go through darkness in your life.
“Everybody does, and you have to stay strong. You know when you say, ‘There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel?’ Well, if you look in there, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It didn’t take me three days to look at the picture. It took me 20 seconds to see that all this was for me: the avenues, the future, these are angels, this is life.
“I am protected by the people who love me for real, and this is my path. This is the road and this is the light at the tunnel, and it’s very, very positive. That whole picture for me is positive, and that’s why I bought that picture.
“That’s why it means a lot to me, and that’s why I came tonight to support not just an artist who is singing but an artist who sees things and has the passion of bringing things to light that we take for granted.
‘Keep that passion’
“I would’ve walked there without seeing anything. There’s writing at the bottom of the pillars that I haven’t fully seen yet, but I know that there’s a message for me in those details. I’m going to really pay attention. I really want to encourage you. Please, keep that passion, but please don’t stop singing!
“When there’s a moment where there’s a picture, when that gets into a tree, a smile of a child, whatever happens in life, if you don’t snap it, if you don’t press that button at the moment that it happens, the magic is gone. What is gone will never return. All my home movies and all the pictures that I have from Rene, my family, my dad, I put on a CD, and my dad is talking to me.
“I put on a CD, and my husband is alive. When I see this, you have captured a moment, and who knows, unfortunately, with what’s going on with life today, which structure will disappear, which structure will stay. I hope as humans we can preserve the rest of our future.”
Turning to Barnev, she said: “I encourage you to keep having this third eye and this extra passion to share with the world because it’s really spectacular.” I asked Celine where she planned on putting the photograph in her Lake Las Vegas home.
She told me: “My whole house is in black and white. There’s no color. There’s only one color, and it’s the gold hand of my husband, so this piece of art could soothe anywhere. I will go home with that piece of art with a part of Barnev, and I will listen like when the picture talked to me.
“My house will lead me to where it should be, and I trust that feeling. It’s not like, ‘Just put it here.’ I’m not like that, put anything anywhere. We don’t work like that, either, so I’m going to go home and it’s going to lead the way. I’ll feel it.”
Barnev has been singing with Celine since 1999. He began photography as a hobby in 2013. Carnevale Gallery curator Tony Carnevale said: “He walked into my gallery one Saturday, I had no idea who he was, what he’s all about — he just walked in, and he was captivated with a few pieces that I have in the gallery, a few images that were really resonating with him.
“We started to talk and I learned that he was the lead backup vocalist for Celine and that he was also a fine art photographer who had never exhibited the works anywhere. When I saw this first body of work that we’ve released here, I had goose bumps then just looking at the images.
“I knew there was something special, but most important were Barnev’s disposition and the way he spoke to me and the way he made me feel, the way he smiled, the way we talked to each other. I felt I had known him all my life. His passion for fine art photography is contagious. I’m just so happy and so delighted to be the first art gallery to present his first release of his works.”
Celine thanked Tony, walked around the gallery checking out the photographs of other artists and posed for photographs with members of her fan club.
“This has been a great Saturday night out,” she laughed as security made a path through the crowds for her to exit through the underground warren of back-of-house corridors at Caesars to get her home. She wouldn’t need the fur coat for a night out on the Strip after all. She had her photograph and was ready for bed!
