What TIFF is to film, CONTACT is to photography

Snapshots from CONTACT annual photography festival

By Elli Stuhler

The thirteenth annual month-long photography festival usurped the galleries of Toronto this May, celebrating the impact this modern medium has on our perception of visual representation. With over 220 venues and 1000 artists, it may have been hard to keep track of what was where. Here are some highlights:

 

Salt and Earth
Jonathan Taggart
Ryerson Gallery

 

About an hour north of Toronto, near the town of Caledon lies Whole Village, an ecovillage where Taggart lived, worked and documented. An ecovillage is, as the artist statement explains, “a response to concerns over a lack of community in our society and the urbanization and impoverishment of farmland.” His photographs depict life in the village with rich black and white imagery of leafy crops, rotting wooden plank fences and the humble gazes of its inhabitants.

 

Iran Revisited
Sanaz Mazinani
Toronto Image Works

 

Thirty years after the revolution in Iran, Mazinani aims to reveal life in Iran with the complexity of Western influence in a traditionalist country and the identity crisis that ensued. The exhibit juxtaposed women in traditional headscarves and women in Western dress talking on cell phones, and of beach patios overshadowed by Armani billboards.

 

All Present and Accounted For
Beverly Owens
The Beverly Owens Project

 

Beverly Owens acknowledges that photography reaches beyond the shutter button and that image modification reaches beyond photoshop. She does this with her exhibit of vintage photographs that she has manipulated through layers of encaustic, pastels, oils and sculpture. The photos she uses range from turn of the century to mid forties and explore the dynamics of the individual within a group, how one stands out or blends in through their posture, expression or mere radiance.

 

Still Motions
Various Artists
Gladstone Hotel

 

While the second floor of the hotel boasted exhibits of over 30 photographers, the third and fourth floor of the historic Gladstone Hotel in Parkdale was reserved for something which, like the Beverly Owens project, stretches our idea of what a photograph is. The images here consisted of different media (from clicking vintage projectors to blu-ray) and were projected onto the wall or played on flat screen video screens. Instead of being portrayed in a single frame, these pieces were actually video loops, but had enough stillness to them to blur the lines between photo and film. Too bad for the artists however, who had their thunder stolen when the Gladstone also offered an open house for their exquisite artist-designed hotel rooms.

 

Jeff Bark
Nicholas Metivier Galler
(Part of Various exhibits)

 

Named one of the 50 best bets by Toronto Life magazine, New York dwelling photographer Jeff Bark’s exhibit for CONTACT is his first on this side of the border. With his smooth fleshy tones and soft shadows, his dreamy nudes are an Ingres painting come to life. His surreal Flesh Rainbow series consists of nude bodies drenched in vibrant colours, but where the bodies are naked, the faces are concealed be it by plants, twisted towels or pillows.