Spent 5 days in Toronto. Went for my opening and stayed
to look at some of the CONTACT shows and to give a talk
at Heather Morton’s big live blog party.

There’s too much to report on for one blog post so I’m
going to break it down into two. Tune in next week for
Part 2.

To begin, though, some hype disguised as critique.

THE PRESS

Well, this isn’t new news, everyone knows this. As more
and more things get written about me I’m struck by all
the little factual falsehoods that sneak into the articles
and blurbs. Kind of reminds me of photography, of how
and what images communicate. Opinions mixed with
some facts and a certain amount of misinformation.

For example……

This is a blurb from Photo Life. Thanks for the hype
and all, but I must point out that I have NOT received
a Governor Generals Award in Visual and Media Arts.

Thanks, too, to NOW magazine for the mention. I must
say, though, that I am definitely not a photojournalist.
Photojournalists do not set up shots.

CONTACT 2010

How to begin?

CONTACT is billed as the world’s largest foto fest. It’s
an open type of thing so anyone who can line up a venue
gets to show. There are fotos everywhere.

The powers that be at CONTACT root thru all the shows
and select some as featured exhibitions. As well, there
are a number of public installations and two curated
shows, what they call “primary”.

I was exhausted from a few weeks of being just craaazy
busy, and the weather the 5 days I was there totally sucked.
That weather was a kind of blessing in disguise, though, as
I felt no guilt holing up in my room at The Sheraton every
afternoon and having 4 hour naps.

But I did manage to get out to see some…..Here’s a brief
report of what I saw, along with some brief notes outlining
my reactions, when I have reactions.

TORONTO IMAGE WORKS GALLERY/
Patrick Dionne & Miki Gingras

This show of pinhole fotos, taken by Dionne and Gingras,
purports to “educate its viewers about the effects of
globalization on third world communities”.

Interesting fotos but, for me, they were way too ethereal
to actually achieve their stated goal. I often wonder about
the point of artists nailing down their objectives too, too
much. Seems to me that that can only lead to confusion.

Here.

CONTACT GALLERY/ Zed Nelson, Jodi
Bieber & Lauren Greenfield

Left: Jodi Bieber, right: Zed Nelson, missing: Lauren Greenfield

This show was about the portrayal and pursuit of “human
beauty”.

I wanted to like the Lauren Greenfield pix of rich, spoiled
kids but, somehow or other, they just left me cold. Here.

Zed Nelson’s work, Love Me, showed aspects of the multi-
billion dollar beauty industry. Here.

Zed Nelson

And Jodi Bieber had a series of portraits of South African
women, Real Beauty, in all their glory. Here.

Jodi Bieber

AGO/Barbara Kruger

A big, didactic, exterior installation.

I really like some of her stuff but this, I thought, just didn’t
work at all.

Barbara Kruger

CBC HQ/Finbarr O’Reilly

Finbarr spent 2 years in the Congo and Rwanda. That work,
presented with lots of additional info and statistics, in the
atrium of the CBC HQ, had a constant stream of folks thru,
looking and obviously thinking and being affected.

Now, I’m not a big fan of photojournalism, I prefer work that’s
more cutting edge, in terms of its relationship to modernity.

There’s been quite a bit of “conversation” on the interwebs
recently about how photojournalism is mired in some weird
kind of time-warp, how hardly anyone in that field can get
past the clichés that permeate it, how, somehow or other,
it all kind of looks and reads the same.

I have to agree with that, but I also must admit that Finbarr’s
work was affecting the people I saw looking at it. So where
does that leave us?

Here.

TO BE CONTINUED……..

Next week….Alec Soth, Ryan McGinley, David LaChapelle and more!

NO COMMENT

I recently bumped into a couple of comments about USER.

Now, usually I try to stay out of the fray, when it comes to
this stuff. And, in fact, won’t be defending my work directly
on the NOW comment board where I found this comment,
from someone who goes by the pseudonym of “Snow White”:

“This is exploitation! These photographs help no one.
They are not beautiful. They are highlighting a problem
that needs fixing but do nothing about it. Has Tony
Fouhse suffered from Crack addiction issues? Has he
lived on this street corner? Is his voice the same as
the subjects?

No!

Photography lovers, please…. learn a little bit about
the “art” of fine art photography.”

And here’s a comment Lisa sent to me, referring to this image:

Candace and Todd, Ottawa, 2007

“This is my boyfriend, Todd in this pic. I have
fortunately been clean for six months but him
he is unable at this point to beat his addiction.
I could not depict illness and beauty as well as
you have Tony Fouhse, in this photo….There is
such a beauty in addiction, one that is far beyond
comprehension. We lose ourselves and there is
such a courageous and beautiful yet diabolical
struggle within us that people may not understand
beautiful is the addict finding ourselves…Thank
you Tony.”

BYTOWN MUSEUM

I have a couple of shots in the new exhibition at The Bytown Museum.,
Evocative Objects: Artefacts Unfolding Neighbourhoods.

Opens this coming Thursday. Details here.

Picture of Yvon, a crack addict and a picture of David Wilkins, the
American Ambassador to Canada. Odd pair, but it works.