40 years of stunning images
National Gallery exhibitions hail diversity of photography in Canada
In the first room of the National Gallery of Canada’s new photography exhibition, a visitor meets up with the familiar faces of some famous Canadians.
There’s Glenn Gould, circa, 1974, at the piano in the CBC studio in Toronto. There’s Ben Johnson in Seoul, 1988, arm raised triumphantly to mark his victory that was discredited days later. There’s Marshall McLuhan, circa 1967, reflected in a mirror, a blurred television in the background.
But Photography in Canada, 1960-2000, the exhibition that opens Friday, is about much more than the most recognizable of Canadians. Through more than 100 diverse photos taken by 70-odd photographers, the exhibition also elicits sparks of recognition and insight with images that are unfamiliar, obscure or even fantastic.
“Each of these photographs comes with an incredible story. I could go on forever,” says Andrea Kunard, associate curator of photographs with the Canadian Photography Institute.
Kunard choose and ordered the photos from 10,000 or so in the gallery’s collection. But the works that made it onto the exhibition’s walls are not meant to be a definitive selection, Kunard says. And while the works cumulatively show the development of photography as an art form in Canada over four decades, they are not ordered chronologically.
Instead, the photos are grouped loosely by certain themes, and the over-arching message is that the diversity of Canadian photography is something to marvel at. “It’s an incredible history of the many different ways people have used photography, and there’s a lot that they’re saying,” Kunard says.
Some photos attest to the photographer’s “snapshot esthetic,” Kunard says. The works have a documentarian’s drive behind them and may depict ordinary people and scenes, even as they ask viewers to ponder deeper meaning behind the images.
So, in the room with photos of Gould, Johnson and McLuhan are photographs of residents of the tiny town of Disraeli, Que., taken by Claire Beaugrand-Champagne, the first female press photographer in her province, shot in black in white in 1972. There’s the Disraeli marching band, passing by. There’s a blind violinist, relaxing in a field outside a barn.
The photos strike a visitor as illuminating the noble in the everyday, but Kunard’s catalogue notes that at the time, Disraeli’s residents were upset by the photos because they felt they had been shown as outdated and even vulgar rather than modern.
The exhibition also casts its gaze
on small, urban landscapes in Winnipeg (circa 1979, in the work of photographer David McMillan) and Vancouver (circa 1987, in the work of Jim Breukelman). Thanks to photographer Orest Semchisen, there’s a spare, 1975, black-andwhite photo of a St. Elia’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Spirit River, Alta., starkly situated in front of an expanse of Prairie sky.
More animated is the ruckus evocatively captured in George Hunter’s 1958 colour photo, Wild Horse Race, Calgary Stampede.
“These photos are very much alive for us in the present. They still mean something. I’m happy that people will connect with them in that fresh way,” says Kunard.
In other rooms, the photos are more conceptual, and perhaps even, as Kunard calls them, “more challenging.” The works are “about photography that’s used to explore ideas” and “reflect the inner creative life” of the photographer, she says.
Among them is Vancouver photographer Rodney Graham’s work Welsh Oak #7, which shows its titular tree upside-down. The photo was taken with a camera obscura, which inverts the image through its pinhole opening, and Kunard says the work speaks to the nature of optics and human vision.
Kunard refers to another section of the exhibition as “the identity room,” adding, “I think identity is a really big Canadian topic.”
In some photos, “the artist starts to perform for the camera” and the camera functions almost as “theatre,” Kunard says.
So, there’s indigenous photographer Shelley Niro, pointedly but coyly dressed as Marilyn Monroe in that iconic white dress, in the 1992 photo that Niro calls The 500 Year Itch.
Nearby is Korean-Canadian photographer Jin-me Yoon’s work Souvenir’s of the Self (Lake Louise), in which she poses stock-still and expressionless in front of the majestic natural backdrop. By including herself in the photo, she questions how identity, ethnicity and place can become embroiled in Canada.
Ottawa photographers figure in the exhibition, from Yousuf Karsh to Jennifer Dickson to “urban Iroquois” photographer Jeff Thomas, who probingly positions his son, A Tribe Called Red’s Bear Witness, in front of Ottawa’s Champlain Monument in a 1996 photo.
In the room beside the entrance to the exhibition is a second, smaller exhibition called PhotoLab2: Women Speaking Art, which is to feature video and photographs by 14 female artists. As does the main exhibition, it runs from Friday until some time after Labour Day.