Scotia Bank Contact Photofestival 2015
May 1 until May 31
205-80 Spadina Avenue
Toronto ON M5V 2J4
CANADA
scotiabankcontactphoto.com
info@contactphoto.com
With among many others work of Vanley Burke and Edson Chagas.
Vanley Burke, Barbershop, 2007.
About Burke:
Africa Liberation, 1977.
In the more than 50 years since he first picked up a camera, Vanley Burke’s iconic images of 1970s black Britain have become so ubiquitous that they often replace the memories of those who were there and become the archetype for those who were not. The turbulent 80s cannot be pictured without Burke’s images in John Akomfrah’s seminal 1986 film, Handsworth Songs, or his 1983 photograph of the Siffa sound system in action, coming to mind. Burke’s work has an afterlife—circulating the Internet, illustrating essays—referenced time and time again, but not always attributed.
Siffa Sound System, 1983.
About Chagas:
Found Not Taken, 2009.
In a private alleyway within one of Toronto’s industrial pockets, Scrap Metal Gallery shares space with a family-run marble business and an independent glass-and mirror-cutting store. Their common yard is filled with marble scraps, unused glass, discarded mirrors, metals, wood crates, and paint cans.
This kind of environment is particularly fitting to the work of Luanda, Angola-based artist Edson Chagas, which considers the resonance of everyday, abandoned materials and how those objects can speak to the cultural makeup of a place. For his series Found Not Taken (2008 – 2014), Chagas photographed objects found on the streets of the places where he has lived, including Newport, Wales, and London in the UK, in addition to his native city of Luanda. This exhibition includes photographic selections from all of these cities. Through this series, an extensive archive of the broken and discarded unfolds, including old furniture, office and household items, clothing, outdated electronics, glass bottles, tires, and random metal and wooden objects whose original purpose is no longer discernable.
Found Not Taken, 2014.
About festival:
Ten years ago the Festival’s first thematic focus raised a question that has been contemplated since the creation of the medium: are photographs truthful representations? Today this question remains contentious, as photography’s relationship to reality persistently transforms. While evolving technologies have resulted in irrevocable changes in the way images are created and viewed, efforts to stabilize their role and function are increasingly complex and all the more superfluous. In recent years, the debate concerning the veracity of the photograph has developed into questioning the medium itself: what is photography today? The fact that this question has so many possible answers reflects an ever-expanding engagement with photography. In essence, it is both a profound means of expression and an everyday obsession that informs how life is explained, understood, experienced, and remembered. As innovative manifestations of photography continue to emerge, the time-honoured practices that ground them acquire momentum and simultaneously evolve. Breaking away from the framing of a specific thematic narrative, CONTACT 2015 celebrates photography as a medium without boundaries.
Found Not Taken, London, 2014.
This year’s Festival presents a spectrum of Primary Exhibitions and Public Installations, drawn together to exemplify the extraordinary breadth and scope of photo-based imagery today. Collaborating with partners across Toronto, this succession of shows includes some of the earliest examples of photographic documentation, as well as recently commissioned images shown for the first time. Although the projects embody more than 170 years of the practice and highly disparate philosophical and technical concerns, several common threads bind them together.
On buildings, billboards, and subway platforms or in major museums and galleries, the images in this year’s Festival transform the experience of the city. Painterly or sculptural, abstract or representational, still or moving, ephemeral or enduring, each of them are innovations of photography, regardless of whether they were captured by a camera, cut from a magazine, output by a computer, exposed under the sun, or printed in a darkroom. Throughout the month of May in Toronto, CONTACT has no boundaries.
Bonnie Rubenstein
Artistic Director
(texts and photos: press dpt. Festival)