19th-Century British Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada
Lori Pauli with John McElhone
Third in a series of publications featuring iconic works from the Gallery’s collection and situating them within a historical and social context. Photographs by some of the medium’s earliest practitioners, including William Henry Fox Talbot, Hill and Adamson, Anna Atkins, and Julia Margaret Cameron, are illustrated and examined. Also explored are the various photographic processes discovered at the time, among them salted paper prints, daguerreotypes, albumen silver prints, collotypes, carbon prints, and woodburytypes. With over 200 illustrations and dozens of individual presentations, this publication provides a complete overview of this crucial period in the development of photography.National Gallery of Canada (01/2011) 168 pp approx 200 bw ill. 10.5 x 8 in softcover 978-0-88884-886-4 $49.00 Can. $55.00 U.S. (39 €)
19th Century French Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada
James Borcoman
The range of photographic vision in the National Gallery’s collection of 19th Century French photographs is vast. The collection extends from topographical photographers who made little pretense to art but, because of the sensitivity and skill produced work that transcends the original purpose, to those who considered themselves as artists and the photographs they produced as art. With over 200 illustrations, this abundantly illustrated publication features an original essay on the development of photography in 19th Century France as well as sixty-six individual presentations. Among the dozens of photographers discussed are Eugène Atget, Edouard Baldus, Maxime Du Camp, Gustave Le Gray, Charles Nègre, and Auguste Salzmann. James Borcoman is the Curator Emeritus of Photographs for the National Gallery and the author of several books including monographs on Eugène Atget and Yousuf Karsh. After Modernist Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada, this is the second publication in a series devoted to the Gallery's photography collection.National Gallery of Canada (01/2010) 168 pp 250 ill (100 col) 10.5 x 8 in softcover 978-0-88884-873-4 $49.00 Can. $55.00 U.S.
American Photographs 1900-1950 from the National Gallery of Canada
Ann Thomas
Composed of just over 100 photographs, this exhibition catalogue celebrates the exceptional contribution that American photographers made to the history of art in the 20th century. Made from 1900-1950, these photographs represent an extraordinary fertile period in photography's evolution. It includes stunning works by Edward Steichen, Clarence White, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, Berenice Abbott, Lisette Model, Weegee and the members of New York's Photo League. A scholarly essay is accompanied by dozens of individual presentations that discuss provenance, history, technique, as well as details of the life and times of each artist. This magnificently illustrated publication is the fourth in the series dedicated to the National Gallery's extensive photography collection. National Gallery of Canada (12/2011) 170 pp 100 bw ill. 10.5 x 8 in softcover 978-0-88884-889-5 $49.00 Can. $55.00 U.S. (39 €€)
Nicolas Baier
Gilles Godmer, Olivier Asselin, Nicolas Baier, Emmanuel Galland & Stéphane Aquin
Two of Canada's most prestigious art institutions have for the first time collaborated on a comprehensive publication as a celebration of this uncommon new talent. Baier is interested in the beauty of the world. He reveals this beauty by means of the newest of means at the pictorial artist's disposal (digital photography) as well as the oldest (composition, colour and form). At first a painter and then a photographer, he has long mastered digital photography. His increasingly discreet use of that technology has transformed his photographic œuvre into a far more malleable medium, more analogous to painting. His photographs are a stunning example of technology at the service of imagination. Three essays, an artist's statement, an interview and numerous colour plates provide analysis, opinion and visual delight. Co-published with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. In English and French.
Susan Bozic: The Dating Portfolio
Gordon Hatt & Bill Jeffries
Susan Bozic’s work recalls the performance-based photography of Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall while taking as its subject the social construction of romance. Bozic’s character's dates a male mannequin and, through her photographs, we follow the couple from courtship and meeting the family to intimacy. Bozic reflects on consumer society's pursuit of happiness and the good life while referencing the internet dating phenomenon by staging dates with someone a little bit "different." Her project merges the optimism of movie-star promotional photographs with questions about both the tradition of courtship and its current state. Two essays elucidate her practice.
Southern Alberta Art Gallery (2008) 64 pp 22 col. ill. 10 x 8 in softcover 978-1-894699-39-6 $20.00 Can.U.S.James Casebere
Réal Lussier & Douglas Bohr
Since the early 1980s the American artist has been making photographs of miniature constructions of the built environment, with images ranging from suburban interiors to institutional structures. Casebere is interested in the point at which photography, architecture and sculpture intersect. He was one of the first "post modern" artists to become known for creating images for the camera, a methodology currently being explored by photographers like Gregory Crewdson and Thomas Demand. English and French.
Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (2003) 28 pp 9 col. ill. 10.5x7.5 in 2551216796 $11.95 Can./U.S.
Melvin Charney
Pierre Landry, David Harris & Gilles A. Tiberghien
Since the 1960s Melvin Charney has created an immense body of work that, while profoundly architectural, has always transgressed into other disciplines. Consequently, like his drawings, sculptures and installations, his photographs are fueled by a strong commitment to the urban environment. This publication tracks four decades of a singular and multidisciplinary oeuvre through Charney's photographs, demonstrating their visual power as well as their place in his overall artistic vision.With hundreds of images to guide us, this publication outlines Charney's trajectory from his earliest photographs of Montreal's old neighbourhoods in the 1950s, through to his use of photographic assemblages in architectural settings, his painted photographs of industrial sites and his gigantic outdoor constructions melding photography with aluminum and wood. With three essays and artist's commentary. In English and French.
Sorel Cohen : Divans maudits
Gérard Wajcman
Over the past 20 years Sorel Cohen has developed a photographic practice with intimate ties to painting and film. This publication presents three key bodies of work produced in the late 1990s: The Wounds of Experience, The Body that Talks and The Docent's Love Story. Each work is concerned with psychoanalysis and the book's title, Divans maudits or "the couches of the damned" succinctly conveys Cohen's preoccupations: the relationship between patient and therapist in all its erotic ambivalence. Sorel Cohen has exhibited widely, most notably at The National Gallery of Canada, the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. She lives and works in Montréal. Gérard Wajcman is a Paris-based psychoanalyst and author of numerous philosophical studies. In English and French.
Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris (2003) 76 pp 39 col. ill. 9x9 in 1896940269 $30.00 Can./U.S.Donigan Cumming: La somme, le sommeil, le cauchemar
Catherine Bédard
Cumming's monumental diptyque, 'Prologue and Epilogue', were presented at the 2006 edition of the prestigious Mois de la Photo in Paris. The accompanying publication with its reference to sleep and nightmares, presents an overview of Cumming's career from photography to video to these new 'photographic murals'. Always at the core of Cumming's practice is a concern with marginal communities. 'Prologue and Epilogue' is a form of retrospective, with Cumming cutting out hundreds of images from his earlier works and digitally pasting them together to form a nightmarish collage that distills of years of creation.
Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris (11/2006) 120 pp 51 col. ill. 11.5 x 8.5 softcover 978-1-896940-42-7 $38.00 Can./U.S.Facing History: Portraits from Vancouver
Karen Love
This assemblage of portraits from the 1950s to today by photographers both internationally acclaimed and utterly forgotten combines to make a portrait of the city. This publication accompanies the European showing of an exhibition originally mounted in Vancouver. Artists include Ken Lum, Arnaud Maggs et Jin-me Yoon.
Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris (2004) 62 pp 26 ill (11 col.) 7 x 5 in softcover 1-896940-33-1 $14.00 Can./U.S.Nan Goldin
Paulette Gagnon & Éric Mézil
This publication, produced in collaboration with the Collection Lambert in Avignon France, provides a unique perspective on the transformation of Goldin's œuvre with photographs produced since 1972, a film and two slide shows. Drawn essentially from the Collection Lambert, a unique collection built by art dealer Yvon Lambert, both exhibition and publication testify to a privileged relationship. In his essay, Mézil describes the artist/dealer bond that produced Goldin's first show in Paris and encouraged her to undertake radically different work, including landscapes and still lifes.
Pascal Grandmaison: Double Take
Sara Knelman & Diana Nemiroff
Known for his coolly distanced photographic portraits, Grandmaison’s new work explores the connections between the economy of the image – its materials and formal and technical conventions – and the social and economic structures that govern our everyday environment. This abundantly illustrated monograph follows the artist’s interrogation of the mechanics of film and photography, as well as the tensions between the realism of the images and the abstract codes underlying their representation. In English and French.Carleton University Art Gallery / Art Gallery of Hamilton (02/2009) 164 pp col. ill. 10.5 x 7 in hardcover 978-0-7709-0524-8 $40.00 Can. $42.95 U.S.
Pascal Grandmaison
Pierre Landry and Reid Shier
Since the late 1990s, Pascal Grandmaison has carved out a reputation as one of the most meticulous and innovative artists of his generation. His work suggests a new approach, not only to photography and video, but also to the way his pieces are exhibited. Often based on the portrait genre, Grandmaison's art is distinctive for its formal strategies such as the close-up and white background. In the introduction, director Marc Mayer writes, "In his world we are very far from the materialistic concerns of pop art. The faces, hair and clothes of Grandmaison's sitters are so much of our time that our ephemeral culture seems more present here than in most other recent art that strains so hard to achieve timelessness. In English and French
Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (2006) 126 pp 50 col. ill. 10.5 x 9 in softcover 2-551-22891-3 $29.95 Can./U.S.Angela Grauerholz: The Inexhaustible Image
Martha Hannah with Marnie Fleming & Olivier Asselin
The work of Angela Grauerholz occupies an important place in Canadian and international photography. From the 1980s on, her search to redefine the art of photography has taken various forms including portraits and interior and exterior scenes with or without people. Yet regardless of the subject, her work gives an impression of timelessness with images that are both commonplace and sublime. This retrospective publication covers twenty years of production and highlights Grauerholz’s major photographic and installation works. Three critical essays discuss the work in relation to time, memory and representation. Born in Germany and a graduate of the Kunstschule Alsterdamm, Angela Grauerholz lives and works in Montreal where she is director of the Centre de Design at Université du Québec à Montréal. She has exhibited most notably at Documenta IX, the 1995 Carnegie International and at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography. In English and French.National Gallery of Canada (05/2010) 240 pp 150 ill. 9 x 6 in Hardcover 978-0-88884-875-8 $25.00
Clara Gutsche: The Convent Series
France Gascon
These remarkable photographs testify to the remarkable talent and tenacity of the artist as well as to a remarkable subject: the cloistered religious communities of Québec, among the last in North America. Originally drawn by the desire to document the cloisters' interior architectural spaces, Gutsche ultimately came under the thrall of the women themselves. In English and French.
Tanya Harnett: Persona grata
David Garneau
Tanya Harnett’s new series of photographic works explore the many and diverse layers of her being through self-portraiture. Harnett reflects on her First Nations heritage and how it has been culturally defined and redefined through the parameters of a westernized education. The complexity of this history is subtly but relentlessly pursued through the lens of the camera.
Southern Alberta Art Gallery (01/2009) 58 pp 19 col. ill. 9 x 6 in softcover 978-1-894699-41-9 $20.00 Can. $21.95 U.S.
Ted Hiebert: Chronicles
Adrienne Lai & Ted Hiebert
Ted Hiebert’s experimental exploration of photography produces provocative serial images that contain layered references to the construction of identity. Rejecting the traditional lighting sources, Hiebert coats his own body in glow-in-the-dark paint and uses this self-generating luminescence to capture the figure on film. While his practice revolves around self-portraiture, Hiebert escapes any notion of narcissism through his acts of transformation which renders the artist anonymous. Hiebert’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions across Canada and group exhibitions internationally. This is the first monograph dedicated to his work.
Bettina Hoffmann: Spoilsport
Adrienne Lai
Hoffmann's photographic practice presents an investigation of conflict, non-verbal communication and the unspoken. With cinematographic undertones, she constructs banal everyday scenes, creating complex situations of people in an atmosphere of feigned indifference, desperate seduction and veiled humiliation. Spoilsport refers to the game of life, love and power and its willful disruption. Originally from Berlin, Hoffmann lives and works in Montreal. Produced in collaboration with the Liane and Danny Taran Gallery. In English and French.
Southern Alberta Art Gallery (2004) 56 pp 34 col. ill. 10 x 7.5 in softcover 1-894699-25-4 $20.00 Can./U.S.Thaddeus Holownia: Station, Irving Architectural Landscapes
Shauna McCabe & Annmarie Adams
The Irving Oil Company has long played an important role in the economic and cultural landscape of Eastern Canada. Its holdings, ranging from the country's largest refinery to the western hemisphere's first deep-water terminal, also include the ubiquitous Irving gas station. Thaddeus Holownia, with his trademark panoramic photography, has documented dozens of these structures over twenty five years, often photographing the same station years apart. His work reveals the complex interaction these boxy modernist structures with their material clutter have with a region known for its traditional, picturesque vernacular. In English and French.
Confederation Centre Art Gallery (2005) 56 pp 29 ill. 9.5 x 9 in softcover 0-920089-63-1 $9.95 Can./U.S.Inhabiting: The Works of Isabelle Hayeur
Serge Bédard
Each photographic work by Isabelle Hayeur incorporates several images, using software to form an apparently seamless representation. Through her choice of images and themes, Hayeur expresses an anxiety about the way humanity has come to occupy the natural territory. The representation not only of a site but of what has happened to it turns her work into something akin to history painting. A history painting that expresses a moral judgment on the rapid degradation of the natural world while also making an acerbic comment on the residential folly that has led to the exponential growth of the suburbs. Isabelle Hayeur has exhibited, most notably, at Mass MoCA and Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Co-published with the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. In English and French.
Oakville Galleries (07/2006) 48 pp 16 col. ill. 11.5 x 10.5 in Hardcover ISBN: 1-894707-24-9 $35.00 Can./U.S.Lisa Klapstock: Liminal
Alison Nordström & Scott McLeod
Lisa Klapstock's photographic practice challenges visual perception of everyday urban environments. This splendid first monograph, illustrated with dozens of colour plates, presents several series produced from the late 1990s to today. "Living Room" documents the hidden life of urban back lanes. "Threshold" - scenes shot through holes in backyard fences - reveals views that are invisible to the naked eye. "Ambiguous Landscapes" juxtaposes stark landscapes with and without the human figure (Klapstock herself). While the work is highly formalized and richly textured, Klapstock's overriding concern is the gray area between private and public and how, as both artist and woman, one inhabites that space. In English and French.
Southern Alberta Art Gallery / Kamloops Art Gallery (04/2006) 96 pp 57 col. ill. hardcover1-894699-33-5 $20.00 Can./U.S.Lisa Klapstock / Paulette Phillips
Gérard Wajcman
Catalogue accompanying the first exhibition in Paris by Lisa Klapstock and Paulette Phillips. Composed of video installations and photographs, the exhibition brings together major works from these Toronto artists: Ambiguous Landscapes (2003-2005), Threshold (2001-2002) and the world premiere of the video installation Field Studies (2007) by Klapstock; It’s about how people judge appearance (2001), The Floating House (2002), Crosstalk (2004) and Monster Tree (2006) by Phillips. French psychoanalyst and author Wajcman provides a unique reading of this encounter between the pair of women by bringing forth a diptych formed by Field Studies and Monster Tree. For the author, each of these two pieces creates – each in its own way yet both playing on the borderline between technology and visual and imaginary enchantment – a vision of “humanity in modern times”. In English and French.
Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris (11/2007) 104 pp 70 col. ill. 8.5 x 6.5 in softcover 978-1-896940-44-1 $32.00 Can./U.SKatherine Knight: Wind and Water
Cheryl Sourkes
Award winning photographer Katherine Knight captures natural landscapes of Central and Eastern Canada in intimate portraits. These geographic settings are combined with notions of memory and narrative, achieved either through direct intervention, as in her exploration of the force of wind and its effect on secondary objects, or through spontaneously captured moments. Rejecting the tradition of grand panoramic scenes, Knight gives voice to specific forms and vantages, encompassing space in intimate ways in a more anti-heroic, proto-feminist tradition. Her vision strikes a balance between a persevering life force and the threat of death from the ineluctable power of natural forces. In English and French.
The Ottawa Art Gallery (2004) 56 pp. 65 ill. 8 x 8 in softcover 1-894906-13-6 $15.00 Can./U.SIan McDonald: Boys and Boxes
Terryl Atkins
The recent resurgence of documentary-style photography is borne from a conscious questioning of what a photograph gives and what it does not. Ian McDonald offers photographic portraits of technicians working at Highland Valley Copper, one of the world's largest open pit copper mines. The workers, all men, are specialists in a variety of trades, and the portraits include those of welders, heavy duty and automotive mechanics, electricians, machinists, tire men, and millwrights. McDonald, who also works at the mine, has photographed each man standing next to his tool box. McDonald approaches his subjects in what appears to be a direct and matter-of fact way and his work provides a fascinating contrast with industrial portraiture of other photographers, notably Yousuf Karsh.
Kamloops Art Gallery (2007) 48 pp 35 col. ill. 9.5 x 7 in softcover 978-1-895497-70-0 $14.99 Can./U.S.Arnaud Maggs: Identification
Josée-Drouin Brisebois, Rhiannon Vogl and Charles A. Stainback
Internationally acclaimed photographer Arnaud Maggs is best known for detailed, grid-like portrait studies that betray a stark intimacy. These include 64 Portrait Studies (1978) and 48 Views (1981-83), a series that included such Canadian celebrities as Yousuf Karsh and Leonard Cohen. In 1973 after a career as a graphic designer (Maggs designed the album cover for Jazz at Massey Hall released by Charles Mingus in 1955), Arnaud Maggs decided to become a visual artist at the age of 47. For nearly 40 years his work has been marked by questions of mortality and reverberates with historical and anthropological meaning. This first career-overview showcases Maggs’ monumental photographic installations, documentation of found ephemera, books, typography, classification systems and diagrammatic drawings. Among the many projects featured are: his internationally acclaimed portraits of Joseph Beuys (1989); Notification (1996), photographs of the envelopes used for the mailing of death notices in 19th century France; and Nomenclature (2006), photographs of two seminal studies on colour published in the 19th century. Published to accompany the National Gallery of Canada's major 2012 retrospective, this abundantly illustrated monograph features two original essays, an interview with the artist, and a commented biography detailing four decades of a singular artistic practice. Arnaud Maggs has exhibited, most notably, at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and The Power Plant. In English and French. National Gallery of Canada (05/2012) 240 pp 180 ill 11.5 x 9.5 in softcover 978-0-88884-8-98-7 $65.00 Can. $69.00 U.S. (52 €)
Arnaud Maggs: Notes Capitales
Russell Keziere & Catherine Bédard
The site of Maggs' photographic research is Paris, the Capital referred to here. His wandering its streets has produced the series "Hotels" and his investigation of its archives, the series "Notification." Both series converge as a celebration of the city which was itself the theme of its Mois de la photographie 2000. Keziere writes eloquently of "Notification", a huge mural composition of nearly 200 colour photographs of death notices while Bédard provides an detailed review of the artist's long and celebrated career. Arnaud Maggs (b. 1926) lives and works in Toronto. He has exhibited widely, most notably at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and The Power Plant. In English & French.
Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris (2000) 75 pp. 36 ill. (22 col.) 10x8 in.softcover 189694017x $35.00 Can./U.S.Scott McFarland: A Cultivated View
Andrea Kunard
A precarious balance between the human and natural worlds comes to the fore in Scott McFarland's large-scale photographs of meticulously maintained private gardens. These gorgeous yet exacting images reveal the precarious balance between human and natural worlds and how photography’s link to reality is both true and fabricated. This publication explores how McFarland manipulates the photograph to depict a state of harmony and peacefulness that borders on artificiality. Scott McFarland lives and works in Vancouver. This publication is the first substantial overview of his work. In English and French.National Gallery of Canada (04/2009) 88 pp col. ill. 10.5 x 9 in hardcover 978-0-88884-861-1 $.99 (Minimum order 10 copies. No discount)
John Massey: This Land
Catherine Bédard & Danièle Cohn
This superbly designed publication features new video and photographic work, notably a series of photographs entitled "The Soldier". Massey's grandiose natural landscapes are inhabited by classic military figures - yet these Vikings, Napoleonic horsemen and American GI's are actually drawn from miniatures. Monumentalized by the large format and emptied of any individual identity, they march, fight and die their way through pristine, idyllic settings. The juxtaposition of real landscapes with obviously unreal figures proposes a unique reading on the themes of masculinity and the military. In English and French.
Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris (2006) 95 pp 63 ill (48 col.) 9.5 x 9.5 in softcover 1-896940-40-4 $4.99 Can./U.SModernist Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada
Ann Thomas
This original publication, which focuses on the early decades of the twentieth century, is the first in a new series devoted to the study of photographic masterpieces from the National Gallery of Canada's international collection. Examining the expansive, innovative and often contradictory modernist ethos that shaped the creation and use of photographic art from 1900 to 1940, this generously illustrated publication highlights dozens of works from Germany, England, Czech Republic, United States, France, Russia, Hungary, Japan and Canada. An introductory essay describes the development of photography artistically, technically and socially. Following the essay, 79 individual works are presented within the context of their times. Each is illustrated with a full-page duo tone plate. Among the artists are some of the world's greatest photographic innovators, notably Eugène Atget, Margaret Bourke-White, Brassaï, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Lisette Model, Alexander Rodchenko and Edward Weston
National Gallery of Canada (2007) 200 pp 250 ill. (98 col.) 10.5 x 8 in softcover 978-088884-829-1 $49.00 Can./U.S.Alain Paiement
Anne-Marie Ninacs
Alain Paiement creates a topography of space through an exercise in photographic mapping and by detailing the contents of the places depicted in minute collages. His impossibly aerial views of familiar yet roofless architectural environments, such as an apartment, are carefully composed constructions of multiple shots that compress the building, its occupants and their activities into one seamless image. With this conceptual tour de force, Paiement provides the viewer with a privileged perspective situated somewhere between the voyeuristic and the divine. Paiement's work has been shown on numerous occasions in North America and in Europe. He participated in the third Tokyo Photography Biennial and in the Kunsthalle in Krems, Austria. In 2003 the Canadian Centre for Architecture showed his work as part of its Tangent e exhibition. In English and French.
David K. Ross : Attaché
Josée Bélisle
Publication of the first solo exhibition of the Montreal artist whose photographs offer an inspired reflection on the packing and storage of artworks. This new series documents a crucial step in museography, while revisiting one of the great moments in contemporary art history. The project revolves around a particular object that is threatened with obsolescence: the traditional packing crate, individually painted a specific colour “attached” to a specific museum. Some ten empty crates from nearly as many institutions are thus documented in detail and become the subject of high-resolution colour images. The quality of the surfaces reproduced and their large size reveals pictorial gestures that recall the major issues involved in abstract painting, be it abstract expressionism, colour field painting or monochromatic abstraction.Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (05/2010) 64 pp 25 x 20 cm softcover 978-2-551-23938-2 $19.95 Can. $25.00 U.S.
Michael Schreier: Storyteller / Waiting for Words Emily Falvey
Michael Schreier’s photographic art represents several years’ inquiry with particular reference to his birthplace, Vienna, Austria. His portraits and photographs of architectural details offer powerful entry into another place and another time: the Holocaust. In her essay, Falvey probes this compelling work with a discussion of the “refusal to depict what cannot or should not be represented realistically; an art of respectful silence before sublime history.” Schreier’s work navigates these troubled aesthetic waters. In English and French.
The Ottawa Art Gallery (07/2010) 52 pp 10 x 8 in softcover/souple 978-1-894906-38-8 $20.00 Can. $23.95 U.S.
Sheila Spence: Pictures of Me
Mary Reid & Robert McKaskell
Sheila Spence’s twenty-year photographic practice has been dedicated to issues of identity, personal relationships and community. This richly illustrated publication presents her individual portraits which are marked by a strong subject/artist connection, her portraits of families with a focus on an individual’s place within, and her arresting images of adolescents and children from her own working class neighborhood. In many ways Spence’s entire practice can be described as a search for a place in the community and the family that surrounds her. An interview with the artist rounds out the investigation into her artistic practice.
The Winnipeg Art Gallery (11/2008) 80 pp col. ill. 9 x 6 in hardcover 978-0-88915-002-7 $15.95 Can. $18.95 U.S.
George Steeves: Photographs
Ingrid Jenkner & Peter Schwenger
For over twenty years the Canadian photographer has been creating staged eroticized performances with himself and his friends as subjects. Positioned at the convergence of disciplines, Steeves's practice is marked by a frank, unidealized nudity within a context of cultural erudition. Presented here for the first time (and nearly never presented at all), the Excavations series has affinities with the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and Pierre Molinier, yet is distinguished by Steeves's meticulous theatricalization.
Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery (03/2007) 48 pp 25 ill. 11 x 8 in sofctcover 978-1-894518-37-6 $20.00 Can./U.S.Gabor Szilasi: The Eloquence of the Everyday
David Harris
Over the course of the last 50 years Gabor Szilasi has created a remarkable body of photographic work. His photographs, which are found in numerous private and public collections, have been sustained by an unwavering belief in the humanistic and documentary value of the medium. This publication uncovers the essence of Szilasi’s artistic vision through his observations of urban and rural life and his recordings of the connections between culture and community. While much of the work was undertaken for specific projects, it is gathered here so as to reveal larger patterns of social interaction and cultural values that only become apparent when photographs taken over time are brought together. Published in conjunction with a major touring exhibition, this lavishly illustrated monograph contains over 260 images, including 121 plates. Born in Budapest in 1928, Gabor Szilasi lives and works in Montreal. David Harris specializes in architectural and landscape photography and is the author of numerous publications, including, Eugène Atget: Unknown Paris (2003) and Eadweard Muybridge and the Photographic Panorama of San Francisco, 1850–1880 (1993). National Gallery of Canada (2009) 250 pp 260 ill. 11.5 x 9 in softcover 978-0-88884-866-6 $25.00 Can. U.S.
Trouble in View: Photographs by Marian Penner Bancroft & Sylvie Readman
Catherine Bédard & Martha Langford
Four women, two photographers and two curators, push at the boundaries of landscape photography by breaking down of the what they identify as the "gender/genre" construct; an allusion to what is traditionally the sex and the aesthetic of the landscape photographer. In bringing together these two photographers for the very first time, the curators challenge the hegemony of both authorship and view, the photographic view even feminists have come to call "masculine". Bancroft and Readman, each in her way takes an oblique approach to landscape, the first through autobiography (both her own and that of the site), and the second through superimposition and multiple layers. In English and French.
Canadian Culturel Centre, Paris (2002) 114 pp (41 ill. (21 col.) 7.5x9.5 in 1896940242 $30.00 Can./U.S.Urban Territories
Réal Lussier
Urban Territories introduces six of the most promising young photographic talents working in Montreal today. Through a wide range of interests and approaches each artist proposes an answer to the question: what is documentary photography in the 21st century? For this generation of photographers the city is not the subject of their investigation but the context for it. For them, the city is a tightening convergence of social, political, environmental and personal realities. By documenting the often unnoticed signs of flux, they demonstrate that art can play a determining role in the debate about the future of our cities. With works by Christian Barré, Martin Désilets, Isabelle Hayeur, Emmanuelle Léonard, Pavel Pavlov and Myriam Yates. An original essay is accompanied by individual artists' statements. In English and French.
Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (2005) 88 pp 61 ill (23 col) 10.5 x 7.5 in softcover 2-551-22783-6 $19.99 Can./U.S.