May 1–August 25, 2013
Ryerson Image Centre
33 Gould Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Admission is free
T 416 979 5164
The Ryerson Image Centre celebrates photography as part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, taking place throughout Toronto, Canada, 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: Arnaud Maggs and Arthur S. Goss: Works and Days—that are Primary Exhibitions in the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, will all take place at the Ryerson Image Centre.
Scotiabank Photography Award: 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 André Kertész 144 Views, Kunstakademie, The Dada Portraits, and After Nadar: Pierrot Turning.Scotiabank Photography Award: Arnaud Maggswas designed by Arnaud Maggs with Barr Gilmore, shortly before Maggs’ passing in November 2012. The exhibition will be on view in the Ryerson Image Centre Main Gallery May 1–June 2.
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. 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 images of municipal activities both groundbreaking and routine. 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.
Here and There: Photography and Video Works on Immigration, curated by Dr. Gaëlle 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. Artists include Sara Angelucci, Ruth Kaplan, Shelagh Keeley, Meera Margaret Singh and Andrew Suri. Their 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 generations 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 on the Salah J. Bachir New Media Wall.
Lead and Light: The Evolution of Lumiere Press will be on view May 1–June 2 in the Student Gallery. 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. The exhibition, drawn from public collections and the press’s archives, is researched, curated, designed, and mounted by ten second-year students in Ryerson University’s Photographic Preservation and Collections Management MA program, under the direction of Associate Professor David Harris. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication documenting the press’s history and the curatorial perspectives taken by this exhibition.
A book launch of Lumiere Press’s twenty-second limited edition handmade publication, Black Star, will take place on May 8 at the Ryerson Image Centre. The book, Black Star, 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 ‘Public Life’ of Photographs” Symposium, taking place May 9–11, will bring together experts in the history of photography, art history, philosophy, and visual culture, from all over the globe, to analyze and discuss the dissemination of photographic images from the nineteenth century to the present. Each of the symposium’s four sessions will include presentations by renowned national and international scholars and curators, to be followed by an audience question-and-answer period. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis; advance registration is not required. The symposium will take place at Eaton Lecture Theatre (RCC-204), Rogers Communications Centre, 80 Gould Street, Toronto.
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, the Institut Français and the Consulat Général de France à Toronto as part of Paris-Toronto and is co-presented with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.
These exhibitions have been financially assisted by the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund, a program of the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, administered by the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund Corporation.