FINDING A FOCUS
Capture Photography Festival returns for third year.
Capture Photography Festival April 1 to 28 | Various Lower Mainland venues Info: capturephotofest.com
In 2009, Kim Spencer-Nairn asked herself a question: Why didn’t Vancouver have an international photography festival?
The lack of one didn’t make sense to her. Spencer-Nairn knew Vancouver already had a well established international reputation as a centre for photography because of the work of artists such as Jeff Wall, Stan Douglas, and Rodney Graham.
The realization really struck her when she was at another photography festival in the desert resort city of Palm Springs, Calif.
“That really was when I went: are you kidding me?” Spencer-Nairn recalled. “Palm Springs has this international photo festival and Vancouver doesn’t? I just couldn’t believe the city that seemed to be famous internationally for its photographers didn’t have anything to celebrate it.”
Spencer-Nairn didn’t want to start small; her goal was to make a big splash right from the start.
“I just thought Vancouver deserved a serous photography festival — not one that’s grassroots and takes 10 years to establish,” she said in an interview.
After having a child in 2010, Spencer-Nairn turned to her attention in earnest to organizing the first Capture Photography Festival which was held in 2013.
The first year’s budget of $400,000 was covered entirely with corporate and private money. Public money wasn’t available for the inaugural festival because governments shy away from providing funding for start-up festivals due to their high failure rate.
Now in its third year, Capture’s budget has increased slightly to about $420,000. Public support from federal, provincial and civic sources has increased to close to $100,000.
This year’s festival features more than 50 exhibitions in public and private galleries, as well as public art installations in Metro Vancouver. A speaker series takes place Tuesdays at 6 p.m. at Inform Interiors in Gastown during the festival.
In a few years, Capture has become part of the city’s annual series of festivals. It’s such a perfect fit for Vancouver’s art scene it feels as if it’s always been here.
“I did this for my love of photography and my love of Vancouver,” Spencer-Nairn said. “This isn’t about me. This is my gift to the city. I want to see it grow and become its own thing.”
For someone running an arts organization, Spencer-Nairn has an unusual background. Before becoming the executive director of Capture and chair of the board, she worked for 10 years as a chartered accountant until realizing that she had become somewhat stuck in the corporate world.
She said that thanks to some good investments, she was able to make an “180-degree change” in her career. She studied photography but realized early on that she was never going to make it a career.
“From there, the festival seemed the perfect marriage of my business and corporate skills with something I was passionate about,” she said.
Contributing to the festival’s success is its low overhead. The organization, for example, saves on its rent by being in one of the few remaining rambling wooden buildings in Gastown. And Spencer-Nairn herself has yet to pay herself a wage for her work with Capture: she remains a volunteer with the organization she started. The festival directs most of its funding to artists and projects rather than administration
Spencer-Nairn looks after the business side and leaves the artistic decisions to curators such as Meredith Preuss, the festival’s program director.
“We see ourselves capturing what is already happening in photographic discourse and trying to be contemporary and current,” Preuss said.
“We don’t have a theme or artistic direction. It allows us to be flexible.”
One of the festival’s big coups last year was persuading BC Hydro to let the festival show art on the facade of the Dal Grauer Substation on Burrard Street. The idea for using the substation to show art came suddenly to Spencer-Nairn.
“I was literally walking down Burrard Street,” she said. “I looked up at the building — which I’ve always thought as kind of cool — and instead of seeing a substation I saw a canvas.”
The space is co-curated with the Burrard Arts Foundation. This year, it features two photographs by Stephen Waddell: Showroom and The Collector. Those images are also on the front and back of the Capture catalogue.
“The plan is that each work (on the Dal Grauer Substation) will stay up for one year,” Spencer-Nairn said. “Each year we’ll commission a new work specifically for that space and always select a Canadian artist.”