May 3 – June 3, 2007
Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival 2007
Showcasing ten artists from nine countries, The Constructed Image: Photographic Culture demonstrates the irrevocable transformation of photography’s relationship to reality as it explores contemporary global events and experiences.
Curators David Liss and Bonnie Rubenstein have brought together 10 artists whose works showcase not only the evolving possibilities of photographic representation, but the ways in which these are particularly well-suited to addressing current issues of broad cultural importance. The artists examine the relationships of the individual to urban and natural environments, to global corporate culture, to history and world events, to storytelling and to the art of making photographs itself. The works express degrees of anxiety and hope – some resolutely in one camp or the other, some encouraging a little of both – as they each construct some version of our world and the ways we live in it. From the strange, fragile brutality of Thomas Demand’s paper replica of the security gate Mohammed Atta walked through on the morning of September 11, 2001, to the saturated ecological euphoria of Scott McFarland’s digitally enhanced gardens, this exhibition reveals photography as a means of creating and engaging cultural space.
Excerpt from an essay by Sophie Hackett, CONTACT 2007 magazine
Thomas Demand, Dionisio González, Ilkka Halso, Simen Johan, Kim Joon, Scott McFarland, Miao Xiaochun, Erwin Olaf, Karen Ostrom, Sam Taylor-Wood
Curated by Bonnie Rubenstein and David Liss
Presented by MOCCA and the CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival
Opening Reception
Saturday May 5, 7 – 10 pm
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