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In Reverence of Food Photos at CONTACT

lauren — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:44:00 -0500

As Toronto's month-long CONTACT photography festival heads into its last two weeks, I discovered there is a little something for everyone. Even the food lovers.

On Sunday I took in Edmund Rek's exhibit, In Reverence of Food, which just launched at Pantry (how appropriate!).

In Reverence of Food came about as a culmination of Rek's own reverence of food. As the other half behind Evelyn's Crackers (artisanal hand-made crackers made by his wife Dawn), founder and coordinator of the wholesale Chefs' Market at the Brickworks, and working as a chef with the likes of Iron Chef Japan Masaharu Morimoto, Rek knows a thing or two about food.

Archive Fever: Jeff Harris's 3653 Self-Portraits

Derek — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:15:00 -0500

The idea behind Jeff Harris's 3653 Portraits doesn't seem particularly novel these days. Swing by a photo-sharing site like Flickr, and you'll see thousands of people who've committed themselves to take a self-portrait each day for an entire year. But step back to 1999 when there was no Flickr (founded 2004), Facebook (also 2004), nor YouTube (early 2005), and all of a sudden Harris's archival portrait project seems a little, well, prophetic.

While the aforementioned technologies have inundated us with more images and video than at any other time in history, it's also intriguing to consider that so many of these are of ourselves. Over and above the various yearlong portrait projects to be found on photo-sharing sites, popular people on Facebook have thousands of photographs in which they're tagged, and kids lacking political aspirations even film their Salvia trips for posterity on YouTube. In short, we've been struck by archive fever. If you're not archiving yourself, the chances are you're being archived by someone else.

CONTACT Report: Questioning Conventionality

Derek — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:45:00 -0500

In my last post I mentioned that I was a bit tight on time when I took in my first round of shows at this year's CONTACT festival. Forgetting that my reasons for this might have been somewhat dubious, it posed an interesting problem in terms of my selection process. Obviously I wanted to pick galleries that were close to one another, but I also wanted to make sure that there would be some thread between each show that I could tie together in my subsequent posts.

CONTACT Report: Typologies of Nowhere

Derek — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:37:00 -0500

I was all ready to spend Saturday bouncing from one CONTACT opening to another when the NHL ran a little interference. You see, despite my passion for the arts, I'm a degenerate hockey fan, and the prospect of missing Crosby and Ovechkin lining up against one another in the playoffs was more than a little unappealing. I had assumed (wrongly) that the game would be a Saturday evening affair, but the American television networks prefer to schedule these things in the afternoon, so I was forced to alter my plans accordingly.

Thankfully, most of the openings on Saturday extended until 5 or 6pm, which meant that I could hightail it to at least three following the game. Knowing that I'd be attending a small number in a short period of time, I decided that it'd be a good idea to select each exhibition carefully. Making good use of the game's intermissions and the festival's magazine guide, I settled upon a few shows that I hoped would make for some interesting comparisons. So over the next couple of days I'll be posting my thoughts and reactions to these exhibitions. On tap today is Susan Dobson's exhibit at The Department, Retail.

Prepare for CONTACT!

Derek — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:27:00 -0500

Contrary to the claims of a certain Christmas carol, I contend that May is the most wonderful time of the year. Because May is when spring really begins - you know, when temperatures actually hit the "warm" mark. It's when everything comes back to life. It's when that odd smell emanating from Toronto ravines is actually rejuvenating. It's when sports fans have the ~~difficult~~ choice of watching baseball, basketball or hockey (alas, just not the Leafs). Oh, there are so many reasons to celebrate May.

But, of all these, my chief reason for loving the month of May is the annual arrival of the CONTACT festival. That might sound overly dramatic, but for lovers of photography, there really is no better time.

Beer and Photography Together at Last

Tim — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:25:00 -0500

One of the more interesting participatory events taking place at the upcoming CONTACT Photography Festival is a series of tours called Heineken Behind The Lens. Each tour takes place in a specific neighbourhood - from the Junction to West Queen West and the Fashion District - and they all weave through galleries and other inspirational spots before concluding with suds and snacks at a local watering hole.

I bring this up now because these tours are going to fill up. For some tours, space is already somewhat limited so best to rsvp pronto to morad [at] contactphoto [dotcom] or by calling 416.880.4539.

CONTACT Photography Festival Pre-Preview

Tim — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:15:00 -0500

The 2009 edition of the CONTACT Photography Festival is still a few weeks away, but that didn't stop the organizers from unveiling the full schedule on their web site last week. Like past years, there is simply a ton of exhibits, installations, films, workshops and parties to check out, so to help me sort through it all, I recently connected with the Executive Director of CONTACT, Darcy Killeen, who filled me in on some of his picks. Here's our Q&A.