News at the IMC

Celebrate and discuss photography at The Ryerson Image Centre during Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival 2013

The Ryerson Image Centre celebrates photography as part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival taking place throughout Toronto during the month of May.

An international photography symposium, the launch of an extraordinary hand-made photography book by Lumiere Press, and four new exhibitions, including two Scotiabank Photography Award Exhibition: Arnaud Maggs and Arthur S. Goss: Works and Days that are Primary Exhibitions in Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, will all take place at the Ryerson Image Centre.

Scotiabank Photography Award Exhibition: Arnaud Maggs, presented by Scotiabank in partnership with Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and the Ryerson Image Centre, is the second annual Scotiabank Photography Award (SPA) exhibition. Arnaud Maggs, winner of the prestigious Scotiabank Photography Award in 2012, is best known for his multiple-grid, serial photographs of faces and collections, systems and historical ephemera. Works in this exhibition include Kunstakademie and The Dada Portraits from the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, After Nadar: Pierrot Turning and Andre? Kerte?sz 144 Views. Maggs’ work is represented in Toronto by the Susan Hobbs Gallery. The Scotiabank Photography Award (SPA) was founded on behalf of Scotiabank by Edward Burtynsky, internationally-renowned Canadian photo artist and Chair of SPA, and Jane Nokes, Director, Scotiabank Archives, Corporate Records and Fine Art Collection and Executive Director of SPA. The $50,000 award, solo Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival exhibition, and book deal with international art photography publisher Steidl, is the largest annual peer-reviewed prize in Canadian contemporary photographic art. Scotiabank Photography Award Exhibition: Arnaud Maggs will be on view in the Ryerson Image Centre Main Gallery May 1 – June 2, 2013.

Arthur S. Goss: Works and Days curated by Blake Fitzpatrick and John Bentley Mays, presents several multi-image depictions of buildings and sites in the burgeoning city of Toronto. Each depiction a kind of Becherian “typology” represents its topic from a variety of angles and different spots in time, revealing two previously unexplored aspects of the large Goss legacy. Arthur S. Goss holds the distinction of being the first official photographer of the City of Toronto. Employed by the City’s Public Works Photography and Blue Printing Section from 1911 to 1940, Goss was called upon to create designed by Arnaud Maggs with Barr Gilmore, shortly before Maggs’ passing in November 2012. His working methodology, demonstrated in the more than 35,000 images held by the City of Toronto Archives, featured the systematic, repetitive documentation of sites and structures at the heart of Toronto’s rapid build-out in the early twentieth century. Over his long career, Goss gave us a precisely focused public record of a developing modern metropolis as it emerged incrementally over time. Arthur S. Goss: Works and Days is presented in collaboration with the City of Toronto Archives and will be on view in the Ryerson Image Centre University Gallery May 1 – June 2 and June 19 – August 25, 2013.

Here and There: Photography and Video Works on Immigration, curated by Dr. Gaelle Morel, Exhibitions Curator at the Ryerson Image Centre, spans from the 1950s to today with photographs from the Black Star collection and photographic, new media and video works by contemporary Canadian artists. This exhibition on the theme of immigration will be the first group show featured on the Salah J. Bachir New Media Wall. The different works deal with issues such as voluntary and hopeful immigration to Canada in the 1950s, refugee shelters in the United States and Canada today, and first generation of immigrants now settled in Canada. Here and There: Photography and Video Works on Immigration will be on view May 1 – June 2 and June 19 – August 25, 2013.

An exhibition celebrating Lumiere Press will be on view May 1 – June 2 in the Student Gallery, and a book launch of Lumiere Press’s twenty-first limited edition publication, The Black Star Collection at Ryerson University, will take place on May 8. The exhibition, drawn from public collections and the press’s archives, is being researched, curated, designed, and mounted by ten second-year students in Ryerson University’s Photographic Preservation and Collection Management MA programme, under the direction of Associate Professor David Harris. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication documenting the press’s publications in public collection in Toronto.

Lumiere Press, founded by the Canadian photographer Michael Torosian in 1981, is devoted exclusively to photography. Each limited edition publication is individually conceived, extensively researched, designed, and impeccably produced. In the fine press tradition, the books are composed in lead, hand printed, and hand bound. The first Lumiere Press publication, Edward Weston. Dedicated to Simplicity, appeared in 1986. Subsequent publications have been devoted to such towering twentieth- century photographers as Paul Caponigro, Dave Heath, Lewis Hine, Michel Lambeth, Gordon Parks, Aaron Siskind, Frederick Sommer, Paul Strand, and, most recently Edward Steichen; contemporary Canadian photographers Edward Burtynsky, Rafael Goldchain, and Michael Torosian’s own work; and to two pioneering New York photographic galleries, the Witkin Gallery and Howard Greenberg Gallery. The recipient of numerous awards, most notably by American Institute of Graphic Arts and The Alcuin Society, Lumiere Press publications are included in private collections and well over 100 museums, libraries, and archives in Canada and throughout the world.

The limited edition handmade book, The Black Star Collection at Ryerson University, currently in production at Lumiere Press in Toronto, is edited and designed by publisher Michael Torosian. The Black Star Collection of approximately 292,000 black and white photojournalistic prints, documents world history of the 20th century with particularly strong representation from the period referred to as the “golden age of photojournalism” that era before the widespread presence of television eclipsed the published photo-essay. The book launch for The Black Star Collection at Ryerson University will take place on May 8 at the Ryerson Image Centre.

The ‘Public Life’ of Photographs Symposium, taking place at the Ryerson Image Centre May 9 - 11, will bring together experts in the history of photography, art history, philosophy, and visual culture. Photography can be a vehicle of information, an instrument of ideology, a means of scientific exploration, and an artistic medium. The reproducibility of a photograph largely determines how it is used, shared, and made accessible. While the advent of the Internet has increased the number of channels through which images can be accessed and shared, the circulation of photographs has been made possible by a variety of networks and media. Each of the symposium’s five sessions include presentations from each participant and an audience question and answer period. Joel Snyder from the University of Chicago will give the keynote address, The Dissemination of Photographs: A New Challenge for Photo-historians and Curators.
Symposium speakers include Dr. Geoffrey Batchen (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand); Dr. Bodo von Dewitz (Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany); professor Marta Braun (Ryerson University);

Dr. Vincent Lavoie (Universite? du Que?bec a? Montre?al, QC); Dr. Elspeth Brown (University of Toronto, ON); Dr. Robin Kelsey (Harvard University, Cambridge, USA); Dr. Andre? Gunthert (E?cole des Hautes E?tudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France); Dr. Olivier Lugon (University of Lausanne, Switzerland); Sophie Hackett (Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON); Dr. Nathalie Boulouch (Universite? Rennes-2, Haute Bretagne, France); Dr. Heather Diack (University of Florida, Miami); and David Campany (University of Westminster, London, UK). The lead sponsor of The ‘Public Life’ of Photographs Symposium is Partners in Art. The conference is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (expected), the Institut franc?ais and the Consulat Ge?ne?ral de France a? Toronto as part of Paris-Toronto and is co-presented with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.