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.

But more importantly he has a deep respect for food, where it comes from, and how it is produced, which is clear throughout the exhibit.

In Reverence of Food consists of three distinct series of photos covering Rek's 2004 travels through South East Asia, Ontario's own farmlands, and the professional kitchen.

The photos of South East Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos) depict a simpler, fresher and local way of eating that is largely not seen here in North America. Open-air markets are found in most small towns and villages, where everything is fabulously fresh and there with the intention of being consumed that day.

The series from Ontario farmers and farmlands consist of beautifully simple shots of foods coming from our very own fertile land. Foods like potatoes and cranberries are often shot being held in the hands of the farmers who produced them, instantly depicting an inextricable intimacy between producer and food.

The kitchen shots capture both the hectic hustle and bustle of a professional kitchen and the quieter simple moments of being a cook. One of my favourite photos from this series was of a stack of pans sitting there at the end of the working day, ready for all the chaos to recommence the next day.

While looking through the lens at three very different worlds, this exhibit shed a new light on their own unique reverence for food. And it's a great way to get your art and food porn fix all in one.

In Reverence of Food will be on at Pantry (974 College Street) until the end of May.

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.

Despite the Orwellian undertones of that last sentence, the reality is that most of us willingly and happily engage in this process. Whereas in the past opportunities for widely disseminated self-representation were generally restricted to artists and writers, nowadays our cup runneth over. The problem is, of course, that the more entrenched and commonplace these opportunities become, the less we tend to think of them specifically as mediums for self-representation. They become something that we do without putting a whole lot of thought into it.

That's where Jeff Harris' 3653 Portraits comes to the rescue. On display at the Santiago Calatrava designed and (fittingly) often-photographed atrium at Brookfield Place as part of the CONTACT festival, this series might just act as a wakeup call. Forgetting that Harris was using digital technology to create a well-stocked archive of his life well before most of us were, the vast scale (10 years!) of his project can't help but work to defamilarize our own participation in personal life-documentation.

Viewing the multiple 10x12 grids of 4x6 photographs, it becomes easier to see what all this archiving is about. Storytelling. Harris's series blatantly stages the degree to which our image-rich culture has altered the way we narrate our lives. There's quite a difference, after all, between pulling the camera out on special occasions and using it everyday.

Some might say that this propensity to take so many photographs is evidence of the increasing banality of contemporary culture - that for all the images we're exposed to, few are stimulating or particularly revealing. But take a close look at Harris's individual portraits and you might just see a William Eggelston or two. So many of these photographs are artfully composed and could be enlarged and viewed in a gallery apart from the series proper. Although Eggelston isn't a portrait photographer per se, neither I would argue is Harris. This is a documentary project in which Harris's surroundings are, more often than not, the main interest.

So I look at this exhibition in two ways: on the one hand, as something of a model, and on the other, as a reminder. I take it as a model because the photos that make up the series reveal a photographer constantly pushing himself to remain creative within a model that could've easily lead to redundancy and dullness. And, in direct relation, I take it as a reminder that such creativity isn't confined to what's traditionally deemed artistic practice. As Harris so wonderfully demonstrates, the life lived and its narrative don't come one after the other - they're fully intertwined.

Theoretically speaking, the festival is organized around the central theme of 'still revolution.' But, due to the sheer number of exhibitions on offer, they don't all explicitly relate to this guiding principle/idea. The exception to this is the feature exhibitions, which tend to explore the theme in more explicit terms. That's not to say that they're necessarily better - there really are some great open exhibitions out there - but that the curatorial process is more controlled. So, to relate this to my original point, I decided that I'd check out some of the feature exhibitions as my first shows.

I've already shared my thoughts about Susan Dobson's engaging exhibit, Retail, so today I'll reflect upon the other two shows that I attended, Andrew Wright's Still Water and Geoffrey Pugen's Another Side of You.

Having been fascinated by the image and description of Wright's show in the festival guide, I was keen to see his work in person. I think that with photography there's a tendency for viewers to be more content with reproductions of images in book or magazine form than they would be with works in other mediums, like painting for example. Some of the reasons for this are obvious, but with Wright's current work it's critical to have a look at the installation of the pieces in the gallery space. You see, the centerpiece of his exhibition at Peak Gallery is actually better described as a photo-sculpture than as a straight photograph. His series of four small waterfalls shot at night are given depth by being mounted on structures that are, when looked at from the side, a cross between the letter "J" and "L."

The effect of this curvature at the bottom of the image is quite fascinating. As you peer at it, the direction of the water flow becomes very difficult to determine. Indeed, if the viewer wasn't aware that he or she was looking at waterfalls, I think it would be near impossible to know exactly what's going on. Thankfully for me, Wright was on hand to explain exactly what the images depict. I have to admit, however, that he had to do so twice before I could "see it." (So take that as a little warning about my credibility!)

As intriguing as this is visually, it's also important to note the degree to which these images function as a temporal metaphor. Recalling the festival's theme of 'still revolution,' and the exhibition's title, Still Water, the complexities and ambiguities related to the flow of the waterfalls implicitly gesture to the strange relationship the photograph shares with time. On the one hand the photograph is said to "freeze" time, to capture and hold an instant. But, on the other, photographic images always invariably gesture to what's outside the frame, to the wider temporal context in which they were taken. A photographer doesn't just compose an image on a spatial level, he or she chooses that 'decisive moment' to open the shutter. And, the conditions that led to this decision are forever preserved in the image produced in that moment, if only implicitly and subtly.

So, as his title suggests, what Wright presents to us are indeed images of 'still water,' frozen in his series of photographs. But, we know that the water must be moving. And our desire to determine the direction in which it flows gestures nicely to the way in which photographs function to fashion our historical consciousness. Photographs preserve and contain the past, but by doing so, they also ensure that we maintain a continuous relationship with it. This draws past and present into a relationship that defies simple linearity. At the risk of being overly theoretical, I'd call this connection dialectical: each element mutually determines the other. We always view the photograph from the present, but the past it depicts shapes that very moment of viewing. I think Wright's images deftly suggest this complex interplay.

There's an obvious segue to Geoffrey Pugen's work here. On display at Angell Gallery, Pugen's work features images that are manipulated to create incongruous juxtapositions between their visual elements. Although not a commentary on time, they also draw a certain conventional understanding of the photograph into question. Despite the technological advancements in digital technologies over the past twenty years, many still invest faith in the idea that photographs must strive to provide a neutral depiction of reality.

Against this longstanding tradition, more and more fine art photographers are embracing the idea of wholesale manipulation of their images. Pugen fits squarely within this group, and from a technical standpoint, he's extremely good (I'll reserve conferring the status of master to heavyweights like Jeff Wall and Andreas Gursky). Perhaps best known for his images that fuse animal and human forms, Another Side of You also works to bring together seemingly incompatible elements through seamless stitching of different images.

Take, for instance, the first of his images that I encountered at the gallery. A picturesque capture of a skater who's fallen off his board, at first there seemed to be nothing particularly remarkable about it. In fact, I actually moved on to his next piece before it struck me that there must be a manipulation somewhere in there. You see, Pugen's work comes advertised in this capacity, so it's common to see gallery-goers virtually pressing their noses against the glass to spot what has been altered or added.

So, returning to it, I realized that there probably aren't skate parks built in such bucolic surroundings. My bet is that two photographs are stitched along the line that separates the foreground from the background. Other images, like the one of a car submerged in a suburban swimming pool, also operate by challenging the viewer to imagine the strange circumstances the might have led to such a thing.

The description in the festival guide notes that "[i]n an age of technological transformation, Pugen's modified prints blend reality with mythology as a strategy for social critique." I think that this more aptly describes his prior work with animal/human forms, of which one piece is featured in this show. The majority of the images featured in Another Side of You don't strike me as particularly critical on a social level. The clever combinations featured in Pugen's work may hint at certain tensions by eliciting puzzled reactions on the part of viewers, but that's not quite the same thing.

The interrogations that Pugen's work provide are more theoretical and philosophical, asking us to question what we take as real, and the degree to which we can trust the images that saturate our culture. In essence, digitally manipulated images make explicit what has always been implicit regarding the photograph's relationship to truth: to some degree or another, they depict what the photographer wants us to see.

Andrew Wright's Still Water and Geoffrey Pugen's Another Side of You run until May 26th and 30th respectively.

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.

I was immediately intrigued by Dobson's work when I came upon its description and sample photograph in the festival guide. But, as is the case with most work in series-format, the visual impact of the actual show is difficult to do justice to in written form. Upon entrance to the gallery, the stark contrast between the white walls and the vivid blue skies of the prints is just wonderful.

For Retail, Dobson photographed numerous big-box stores with empty parking lots that she then altered by masking the retail structures in a concrete grey tone. The great success of her work is the control of the formal elements of each photograph - in particular the vantage point and colour temperature - to give the sense that the landscapes depicted are both everywhere and nowhere at once. There's a definite indebtedness to Bernd and Hilla Becher here, but in the best possible way.

Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, the Bechers captured various industrial forms - like water towers, blast furnaces, storage silos and warehouses - in a series of crisp black and white photographs that they subsequently collected as a representative "typology" of the given form. To establish consistency and neutrality from one form to another, they always shot on overcast mornings, used the same frontal perspective and an elevated vantage point. When displayed in galleries, the images are invariably hung in a grid pattern that highlights the uncanny similarity from image to image.

With Retail, Dobson has also created a representative typology, one that effectively reveals both the profound banality and pervasiveness of such retail structures. At one point I was trying to be clever by identifying where each photograph was taken based on the unmasked surroundings. I then overheard Dobson say that most of the images were shot in and around Cambridge and Guelph. Considering that I assumed each one was taken around the GTA, it's pretty clear that her technique is effective.

Despite our understandable desire to guess at where the photos might have been taken, the point really is that they could have been taken anywhere in North America. The landscapes are so familiar because we've all seen them hundreds of times. But, bereft of cars and cast under such inviting blue skies, there's an ominous tone to these images. They subtly suggest our worry-free capitalistic complicity with the increasing hegemony that surrounds us.

Stayed tuned for tomorrow's post on Andrew Wright's Still Water and Geoffrey Pugen's Another Side of You.

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.

Not only are there photographic exhibitions in most of the galleries across the city, but subway stations, cafes, and stores citywide participate by hosting hundreds of independent shows. Although many already know this, the fact that it's the biggest photography festival in the world is quite an accomplishment for our often artistically challenged city.

Earlier today I got a chance to attend the festival's opening press conference and a sneak peak of the primary exhibition, Still Revolution: Suspended in Time, which opens on May 1st at MOCCA. As has been the case in years past, the festival organizers and the curators at the gallery have done an admirable job of putting together a timely and relevant lead exhibition with a strong international component.

Playing on an oxymoron that has always defined photography, the curators explain, "Still Revolution: Suspended in Time looks back to the revolutionary foundations of photography to explore the current innovations that continue to transform the medium." This double movement of looking forward and back is a fitting gesture to both the temporal complexities of the photograph and a recognition of the fact that, for all the digital advancements of recent years, the photographic image has always been radical in some sense.

Consider what Louis Daguerre had to say about his creation in 1838: "The daguerreotype is not merely an instrument which serves to draw nature... [it] gives her the power to reproduce herself." From the get-go, the photograph was conceived of as more than just a mere copy of nature. And although the various ways in which photos exceed their conventionally determined limits as re-presentations are too numerous to list, Still Revolution provides some challenging contemporary examples for festival-goers' delectation. Ranging from the socio-political commentary of Mikhael Subotzky and Stan Douglas's contributions to the more theoretical interrogations of Idris Khan and Walead Beshty, as the feature exhibit, it showcases a wide breadth of photographic practice to support and highlight its themes.

Over the course of the next month, my colleagues and I will do our best to provide thorough coverage of the 2009 edition of CONTACT. Stay tuned for reviews of exhibitions, public installations and walking tours, more information about our 50 artists, 50 photos show at Barbershop Gallery, and reports on various other aspects of the festival.

The CONTACT festival runs from May 1st-31st, 2009.

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.

There are four tours (one each Saturday during CONTACT). More details can be found via the following links:

• May 2nd - Queen West
• May 9th - The Junction
• May 16th - Fashion District
• May 23rd - Queen West

Photo by Kevin Steele on Flickr

CONTACT is now the world's largest photography festival. What's been the secret to its success and what has made Toronto such a great host city for it?

CONTACT stimulates excitement and discussion among a diverse audience that has grown to over 1,000,000 visitors. It is focused on cultivating an increasing interest and participation in photography every year. The festival's success, to a great degree, is a result of the open call for exhibitions and this continues to provide an opportunity for emerging artists to contribute unexpected and memorable encounters with photography throughout the city, alongside leading professionals in the field.

CONTACT delivers democratic participation of exhibits. Staff of the festival believes that the festival's success has resulted from the ability to satisfy an open-call to exhibit to all artists, as part of the festival. This unique open-call ability provides a much-needed and appreciated opportunity for all artists, including emerging photographers, to display and contribute to a unique visitor encounter with photography throughout Toronto. Emerging artists are likely to exhibit alongside leading professionals.

To make sure that the quality of the exhibition stays at the highest level, Festival staff, since 2002, have focused on juried highlights of the festival and curated programming. This unique approach to the festival has lead, to the unprecedented success of CONTACT, and this mix has now become a central focus of development for future festivals.

Public Installations, introduced in 2003, allows many additional people in the city to enjoy the festival. The public installations, usually in high profile public space such as Subway platforms in Toronto's most traveled subway stations, include images by leading Canadian and international artists. They are reproduced as posters or billboards in high profile advertising displays, capturing the attention of both the general public and arts audiences alike. According to CBS Viacom, the audience circulation in 2006 for these displays reached over 13 million unique impressions.

To further focus interest in CONTACT, staff introduced an annual theme in 2005. The theme provides a critical focus to enrich and expand programming and a critical basis from which the festival can structure open-call exhibitions. Issues related to the annual theme are explored through public installations, feature exhibitions, lectures and events.

The festival is very large. To respond to an audience wish to concentrate on a smaller number of worthwhile venues, Feature Exhibitions selected by CONTACT were introduced in 2002. These Feature exhibitions have now become a central aspect of the festival. The features allow focusing on partnerships with dealers, communities, and themes from which the festival draws media and audience interest.

Feature Exhibitions have allowed the development of community relationships and specific programming partnerships. It also established the foundation for a two-tired exhibition structure along with the development of the annual theme, separating "feature" exhibitions from general "open" exhibition listings in the magazine and web site. This has allowed two benefits. The first is establishing critical mass around important exhibits, and fostered a desire for many to find interesting less well-promoted venues from which to base media and other interest. These distinctions have encouraged higher standards for all exhibitors, and also fostered greater innovation through the pursuit of featured distinction.

Toronto, one of the most multicultural cities in the world, has truly embraced CONTACT's democratic and grassroots nature, to make it the largest festival in the world.

The festival is now in its 13th year. Do you ever get the itch to try something that's a radical departure from years past? Or is the formula pretty solid at this point?

The formula of CONTACT has been very successful and this years festival will continue in the path of the last few years. The biggest issue with radical departures is funding. CONTACT presents the festival on the backs of four full time employees. Other similar festivals have five times as many employees!!! In order to make drastic changes we would need resources - both human and monetary. However, get ready for something new and radical in the next 18 months!!!

CONTACT is perhaps most known for all the photography exhibits, but there's also a significant film component. Have you seen audiences grow for the film screenings over the years? What are 2-3 of the films that are must-sees this year?

You wanted drastic change - you will get it in the Film Program this year! Our Film Program has been selling out the NFB for years and in order to reach a bigger audience we will be presenting the program on TVO this year. This new exciting partnership will allow us to significantly increase our audience and present programming during the entire month.

The entire series will be introduced by CONTACT board member Edward Burtynsky. My 3 not to miss are - Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz and Stars by Helmet Newton.

With more than 220 venues participating in this year's festival, it can be a bit of a challenge to navigate them all. What are some of the exhibits you're most looking forward to?

1. Still Revolution: Suspended in Time (MOCCA)
2. Magnum Photos: States of Conflict (CONTACT Gallery)
3. War Zone Graffiti (Queen West Area and Ace Lane)
4. Le Grand Fatras (MOCCA Courtyard)
5. The Drunken Bride, Russia Unveiled (Pikto Gallery)
6. 3,653 Self Portraits (Brookfield Place)
7. Regular 8 (Wynick/Tuck)
8. Every Building in the City of Toronto (Prefix)
9. Longing and Belonging (Board of Directors)
10. Don't See Don't Hear Don't Speak (Harbourfront Centre)

I'm sure if Darcy was to add one more to the list it would be 50 Artists, 50 Photos at Barbershop Gallery. This is an exhibit we're putting on this year in collaboration with Sam Javanrouh, Rannie Turingan and Istoica. You can add the event for our opening night party (May 7th) on Facebook.

Photo by Jeff Harris