Join the Goethe-Institut Toronto for a free curatorial talk and opening reception of the Goethe Media Space show "Heinrich Zille: FUN FAIR" with Prof. Gerald McMaster, Dr. Deepali Dewan and the Goethe-Institut's Program Curator Jutta Brendemühl in conversation, part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

Heinrich Zille (1858–1929) was a pioneer of social documentary photography in Germany and is often called the world's first "street photographer." Most famous for recording Berlin's contradictory vibrancy and precariousness at the beginning of the 20th century with a hand-held camera, he also captured the cultural idiosyncrasies of the times, for example in snapshots of Wild West shows as popular attractions on German fairgrounds.

The Goethe-Institut presents two of Zille's large-scale images, taken in 1897 and 1900 at Fairground Lietzensee in Berlin. These are based on prints taken by Thomas Struth in 1985 from Zille’s original glass plate negatives, which are archived at the Berlinische Galerie.

Curator, artist, and scholar Gerald McMaster is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Visual Culture & Curatorial Practice at OCAD University, Toronto. Among his many previous roles, he has served as co-artistic director if the 18th Biennale of Sydney and curator of Canadian art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. McMaster is currently organizing an academic symposium on The Entangled Gaze: Indigenous and European Views of Each Other for fall 2017.

Dr. Deepali Dewan is an art historian and Senior Curator of South Asian Arts & Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. She teaches in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto and is affiliated with the Centre for South Asian Studies. She is also part of the Toronto Photography Seminar, a group of scholars from Ontario institutions who read, produce, and edit collaborative research concerning the history and theory of photography. Her show “The Family Camera“ is part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, opening May 6 at the ROM, where she will also be hosting the conference “Reframing Family Photography” in September 2017.

Part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival