April 29 – May 28, 2006
Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival 2006
For Toronto’s international photography festival CONTACT, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art is pleased to present Imaging a Shattering Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate. The ecological degradation unleashed by the industrial revolution is increasingly leading concerned photographers to bear witness to the profound transformation of our world. While natural calamities wreak havoc upon the environment, this exhibition and its catalogue underscore human-induced threats and damages.
Intended to reaffirm the urgency of a global response, Imaging a Shattering Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate features fifty-six provocative testimonies by 12 prominent North American photographers.
Removed from the realm of domesticity, the selected works look beyond our individual rapport with the environment, our household water usage, recycling efforts, and fuel consumption, in order to foreground the impact of societal behaviours, industrial practices, corporate priorities, and governmental policies. Favouring industrial complexes, mining sites, dried-up lakes, landfills, waste ponds, nuclear test sites, and other exclusion zones, these artists aspire to convey the big picture. By assuming a certain distance from their subject, they draw attention to the reckless stewardship of our planet.
Edward Burtynsky, John Ganis, Peter Goin, Emmet Gowin, David T. Hanson, Jonathan Long, David Maisel, David McMillan, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, John Pfahl, Mark Ruwedel
Curated by Claude Baillargeon, Assistant Professor of Art and Art History, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan
The exhibition and publication are co-sponsored by Meadow Brook Art Gallery/Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, and CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival
Opening Reception
Friday May 5, 7 – 10 pm
Programming
Curator’s Talk with Claude Baillargeon
Saturday May 6, 1 pm
Partners
