Check out 18 striking photos from Toronto's CONTACT photo fest for 2013
Photography rules the image world, okay? And it will dominate Toronto’s art scene next month, courtesy of the 17th CONTACT Photography Festival, the lineup for which was released on Tuesday. As ever, the festival, running from May 1 through May 31, promises to be exhaustive and exhausting: 10 primary exhibitions in venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and TIFF Bell Lightbox, plus nine public installations, 32 featured exhibitions and 134 open exhibitions scattered across the city. All are being gathered under the rubric “Field of Vision” – an exploration of “the ability to conceive an exceptional idea, image, object or circumstance through photography.” Of course, there are many must-sees but among the most must-see of them are Food, a two-part exhibition of 235 large-format, full-colour images of (yes) cuisine, much of it shot in Toronto locales by renowned British lensman Martin Parr (at Pearson Airport, April 24-Aug. 30; Metro Hall, Apr. 30-June 1); Genesis, a selection of 245 superbly reproduced black-and-white photographs of landscapes, wildlife and humanity by the legendarily peripatetic Sebastiao Salgado (ROM, May 4-Sept. 20); and 24hrs in Photography, the North American premiere of Dutch advertising director Erik Kessels’s installation of 350,000 images he downloaded and printed out from the online photo-sharing site Flickr in the fall of 2011. The heap o’ photographs – the title derives from the number of pictures that are usually uploaded to Flickr in a single day – will sprawl and spill through the confines of the CONTACT Gallery, located at 80 Spadina Ave. (May 1-June 15). Details on exhibitions, programs, workshops and lectures at www.scotiabankcontactphoto.com
West Side Gym, Harlem, New York, 2004.Pete Doherty
A long, long time AGO. Lee, Gary, Pat, Danny, Zoé, Greg, Barb, 2012.Jason Evans
Seal Heart, from the series In the Playroom, 2010.Jonathan Hobin
Part of a selection of photographs from CONTACT Photography Festival, May 1 to 31, 2013, various locations in Toronto.Doug Ischar
Erik Kessels’s 24hrs in Photography installation, composed of 350,000 images, has its North American premiere exhibition at the CONTACT gallery.Erik Kessels
Abstract No. 3, from the series World Trade Center Concrete Abstracts, 2012.Shai Kremer
Sun Eclipse (Paris)Chris Marker
Untitled, from the series The Girl Document, 2013Edith Maybin
Aphoristic Currents, 2013.Meryl McMaster
Food (an exhibition of 52 large-format, full-colour images of just that) is at Metro Hall April 30 to June 1 as part of the CONTACT Photography Festival.Martin Parr
Food (an exhibition of 52 large-format, full-colour images of just that) is at Metro Hall April 30 to June 1 as part of the CONTACT Photography Festival.Martin Parr
Food (an exhibition of 52 large-format, full-colour images of just that) is at Metro Hall April 30 to June 1 as part of the CONTACT Photography Festival.Martin Parr
Food (an exhibition of 52 large-format, full-colour images of just that) is at Metro Hall April 30 to June 1 as part of the CONTACT Photography Festival.Martin Parr
Part of a selection of photographs from CONTACT Photography Festival, May 1 to 31, 2013, various locations in Toronto.Max Regenberg
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska, 2009.Sebastião Salgado
Bryce Canyon National Park during a snowstorm. Utah, 2010.Sebastião Salgado
A Qaddafi supporter holds a portrait of the Libyan leader, March 9, 2011.Moises Saman
Michael Willems