Posts Tagged ‘black and white’

Cutlines

Posted: May 20, 2016 in events, galleries
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‘Cutlines’, an exhibit of old photographs from the Globe & Mail,
part of the CONTACT Photography Festival

people standing in a large room, the old Press Hall at the Globe and Mail newspaper, looking at an exhibit of old photos. Some photos are being projected onto a wall

below: A small sample of the 175 vintage black and white photos from the vast collection held by the Globe and Mail newspaper on display.

old photographs, black and white, of small towns, in a display case, as part of an exhibit called Cutlines, old photos from the Globe and Mail collection

below:  The exhibit is being held at the Press Hall on Wellington Street (near Spadina).  This old building is slated for demolition in the near future as the Globe and Mail is in the midst of moving to a new home.  Prints were in cabinets in the center of the room while other images were projected high on the walls.

people standing in a large room, the old Press Hall at the Globe and Mail newspaper, looking at an exhibit of old photos. Some photos are being projected onto a wall

The Globe & Mail has amassed a collection of about 750,000 photographs.  As they transition from print to digital images, they are ‘cleaning house’ with respect to their photo archives.  About 100,000 of the prints are going to be digitized and a portion of those donated to the new Canadian Photography Institute at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

below: Some of the pictures were covered with red, with what is known as a rubylith mask.  When the images were printed, the portions covered in red remained as they were while the rest of the picture could be changed to suit the needs of the story of the day.

silhouette of a woman standing in front of a lit display case of old photographs

people standing in a large room, the old Press Hall at the Globe and Mail newspaper, looking at an exhibit of old photos. Some photos are being projected onto a wall

people standing in a large room, the old Press Hall at the Globe and Mail newspaper, looking at an exhibit of old photos. Some photos are being projected onto a wall

people standing in a large room, the old Press Hall at the Globe and Mail newspaper, looking at an exhibit of old photos. Some photos are being projected onto a wall

below: The woman with the two trophies, bottom left, is Marilyn Bell who swam across Lake Ontario.  I know that the man beside her is from a story about a cowboy championship of some sort in Calgary and my apologies for not remembering more of the details.

old photographs, black and white, of people with trophies, in a display case, as part of an exhibit called Cutlines, old photos from the Globe and Mail collection

silhouette of two men standing in front of a lit display case of old photographs

On view at 425 Wellington St. West until 26 June 2016

#CONTACT16

Dysturb

Posted: May 9, 2016 in events, graffiti and street art
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Spread around Kensington and Chinatown are 20 large black and white photos taken by a number of freelance photojournalists who are part of a group called #Dysturb.   One of their goals is to present photojournalism in new ways, including as street art, with the aim of engaging people and encouraging discussion of global issues.   The images are part of an exhibit for the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

Kensington has had a problem with taggers for a while.  Often street art gets vandalized in that area.   The #Dysturb photo that was at 56 Kensington (under Mona Lisa) has already been torn down and a couple of others have been ripped.

Pictures of some of the images that are part of the exhibit are shown below.  I have included a partial transcription of the words that accompany each picture.

 

Libyan Coasts, August 1, 2015
Photo by Christophe Stramba-Badiali/Haytham

a large black and white photojournalist picture, part of CONTACT photography festival, pasted on a wall - a boat load of Libyan migrants is being rescued from their rubber dinghy.

West African migrants are seen aboard a boat, approximately 20 nautical miles off the Libyan coast, as they are about to be rescued by Medecins Sans Frontieres. The MSF-hired ship, named Argos, was patrolling the waters off Libya when it encountered one rubber dinghy carrying a total of 111 migrants including several children and infants. “

Barpak, Ghorka District, Nepal, May 9, 2015 ”
Photo by Renaud Philippe/Hans Lucas

a large black and white photojournalist picture, part of CONTACT photography festival, pasted on a wall - children playing in the wind created by a helicopter, Nepal, on a wall in an entraceway. A man is busking in front, and there are people walking past on the sidewalk

Children play in a cloud of dust and gravel thrown by an Indian army helicopter landing in Barpak Nepal.  The community is at the epicenter of the devastating earthquake that struck April 25, 2015, taking over 8000 lives.  Of Barpak’s 1400 houses, only 20 remain standing.   The rest of the town is a pile of rubble that blends into the rocky landscape.  An archway that somehow survived the quake greets visitors with a rueful ‘Welcome to Barpak’.”

Shaanxi Province, Henan, China, February 27, 2014
Photo by Sim Chi Yin/Vii

a large black and white photojournalist picture, part of CONTACT photography festival, pasted on a wall - an ill Chinese man is being comforted by his wife. The picture is on a graffiti covered wall and a black car is parked close to it.

Gold miner, He Quangui, battling silicosis, struggles to breathe while cradled in the hands of his wife Mi Shixiu.  After many attempts to stabilize his breathing, in the early hours of the next morning her tried to kill himself to end the suffering.  He contracted the irreversible disease working in illegal gold mines in China’s Henan province.   He is among some six million workers in China who have pneumoconiosis – the country’s most prevalent occupational disease.”

Cizre Turkey, October 30, 2015.
Photo by Emilien Urbano/Myop for Le Monde
NOTE: I took this picture on Friday. Today (Monday) it was gone.

large black and white photo pasted onto a boarded up storefront of European Textiles on Spadina Rd. The photo is part of #Dysturb exhibit at Contact Photography Festival. It shows a hooded man holding an automatic rifle

A militiaman from the PKK Youth wing YDG-H in Cizre Turkey.  The Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H) – the militant youth wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – are battling to defend their neighbourhoods from Turkish security forces.  The YDG-H has been acting as a paramilitary force in Cizre for the past few months and has closed off several Kurdish neighbourhoods with their armed checkpoints and patrols.

Fort McKay, Alberta, Canada, August 12, 2015
Photo by Ian Willms/Boreal Collective

a large black and white photojournalist picture, part of CONTACT photography festival, pasted on a wall - a sick boy is lying on a bed, on a wall in the entranceway to a store, sidewalk and street scene in the background

Dez, 7, plays in his bed.  Dez was born with an underdeveloped heart and has received multiple open heart surgeries.  His family and healthcare professionals in Fort McKay believe that his condition was caused by environmental pollution.   Fort McKay is an indigenous community that is surrounded by oil  sands developments.”

Kunduz City, Afghanistan, November 18, 2015.
Photo by Andrew Quilty/Oculi

a large black and white photojournalist picture, part of CONTACT photography festival, pasted on a wall - a mother (covered in a black burka) and her daughter in grief, at a gravesite. Pasted on an orange wall with an old brown leather sofa in front of it.

Najibah tries to comfort her daughter Zahara, 8, as they weep over the grave of their husband and father, Baynazar.   Baynazar, 43, was wounded by gunfire on his way home fromwork during the Taliban takeover of Kunduz in late 2015.  He was taken to the nearby Doctors Without Borders (MSF) trauma centre.  In the early hours of October 3, during his second operation, a US AC-130 aircraft attacked the hospital for more than half an hour, killing 43 MSF staff, patients and nurses.  Dozens more were wounded.

About #Dysturb

#CONTACT16

refugees outside the Italian Consulate

Posted: May 7, 2016 in events
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Refugees in a State Apartment, Jens Ullrich,
Photo exhibit, on a fence outside the Italian Consulate, Dundas West at Beverley.

Part of Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

photos mounted along the exterior of a wrought iron fence around the Italian Consulate, right beside the sidewalk. The consulate is on old brick house (mansion) from the 1800's - 3 of the photographs, people walking past

Ullrich has taken found black and white photographs of the interior of a large home near Bremen Germany.  The photos were taken in the late 1920’s.    Each photograph is of a different room in the villa and to each picture Ullrich has added  one person.   If you knew nothing about the series, you wouldn’t know that the subjects were refugees.

In each photomontage, singular individuals are depicted—usually with their faces hidden from the camera—within empty yet elaborately fashioned spaces that emphasize their solitude and unstable status. “

photos mounted along the exterior of a wrought iron fence around the Italian Consulate, right beside the sidewalk. The consulate is on old brick house (mansion) from the 1800's - phot by Jens Ullrich of a woman refugee with her face obscured by clothing, sitting on a chair in the bathroom of a large bathroom. also a photo of a male refugee in another room, looking in a large mirror

One of the concepts behind this series of images was the desire to

respectfully capture the disparate emotions of these individuals and their precarious situations.”

photos mounted along the exterior of a wrought iron fence around the Italian Consulate, right beside the sidewalk. The consulate is on old brick house (mansion) from the 1800's - as seen from across the street with pedestrians walking past and cars driving past

photos mounted along the exterior of a wrought iron fence around the Italian Consulate, right beside the sidewalk. The consulate is on old brick house (mansion) from the 1800's - the photos are of refugees that have been photoshopped into old photos of the interior of the apartment of a wealthy person from the 1920's
#CONTACT16

big pictures on Spadina

Posted: April 30, 2016 in events, public art
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May is photography month in Toronto.  It is the month when there are numerous exhibits in public spaces and in galleries, all part of the CONTACT Photography Festival.   Over the next few weeks I hope to visit many of the exhibits and blog about some of them.   From past experience I have discovered that a lot of the public installations appear before May 1st so I went exploring yesterday.

below: Looking south from Spadina and Adelaide….  Partially obscured by a building, on the right in this photo, is the first large black and white photo that I saw.

view from the NE corner of Spadina and Richmond streets. a small parking lot is directly across the street, two large billboards loom over the lot. Once is for Lorne's coats showing two people wearing coats. The other is for Maple flavoured iced capp at Tim Hortons.

below: Up close,  ‘Drape’ by Eva Stenram.  Stenram has taken a 1960’s pin-up photograph of a woman and manipulated it.  She has brought the background, the drapery, forward and has covered up the original subject in the picture.

large black and white photo by Eva Strenram called 'Drape'. It is mounted on the upper level of a three storey red brick building. It shows a woman sitting on the floor partially obscured by drapery. Her upper body and head can not be seen.

below: Looking west on Wellington from Spadina.  The light grey building is the Old Press Hall (Globe and Mail) which will be demolished in the near future.

looking down the street past parked cars. A large black and white photo is on the side of the building.

below: Up close, ‘Stopping Point’ by an unknown photographer.  The original title and description was: ‘Along the new Highway, which runs from Smooth Rock Falls to Fraserdale, Ontario, there’s no sign of human habitation apart from one empty lumber camp, c.1966. 

A very large black and white photograph from the 1960's of a car on a two lane road with pine trees on either side. There is a boat tied to the roof of the car. The photo is on the side of the Globe and Mail building with cars parked around it.

The above photograph is one of 750,000 photos in the Globe and Mail’s picture library.   100,000 of their old photos are being digitized to create a new historical archive.  From these, a collection of 20,000 prints will be donated to the newly formed Canadian Photography Institute at the National Gallery of Canada.

More of the photos from the Globe and Mail’s collection are on view inside the Old Press Hall.

our faces are all over the place

Posted: October 12, 2015 in events, public art
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Inside Out, a global art project
with more than 250,000 portraits in 124 countries

This project came Toronto as an extended Nuit Blanche installation.

Two men are holding up a large black and white photo of the head and shoulders of one of the men that has just been printed

Starting a few days before Nuit Blanche the Inside Out mobile Photobooth was parked at Nathan Phillips Square.  Anyone who was interested could have their picture taken – a digital copy was emailed to each participant and a large black and white copy was printed within minutes.  The photos were collected and then used to make one large image, a series of concentric circles in the center of the square.

A picture of the mobile photoprinting booth that was used for the Inside Out global art project at Nathan Phillips Square. Some people are waiting in line to have their picture taken.

Two people are holding up a black and white photo of a girl's face. She has her fingers up to her eyes in an owl face. The man holding the photo is making the same face.
below:  Getting ready for Nuit Blanche at Nathan Phillips Square

A group of young people are using brooms and sqeegees to glue blackand white photos of peoples faces onto the concrete of Nathan Phillips Square

A group of young people are using brooms and sqeegees to glue blackand white photos of peoples faces onto the concrete of Nathan Phillips Square

Concentric circles of black and white photos are being glued to the concrete at Nathan Phillips Square, overview, photo taken from the upper level.

below: Nathan Phillips Square at Nuit Blanche

a group of people is gluing pictures to the concrete while many people look on, most are behind barricades, night time

view of the Inside Out Project at Nathan Phillips Square on Nuit Blanche 2015

below: The side of the ramp to the upper level was also covered with photos.

A group of people pose beside a wall that is covered with pictures, nuit blanche, night time.

black and white photos of peoples faces glued to a wall, part of Inside Out Project in Toronto

below: … as was the south side of the 3D Toronto sign.

3D Toronto sign covered with black and white pictures of people, at night, at Nuit Blanche when there were a lot of people standing around it.

below:  The Inside Out Project remained after Nuit Blanche.

Two photos that are glued on the O of the 3D Toronto sign. One is of a man in Blue Jays T shirt and one is of a ayoung man with his hands on his cheeks and a wide eyed, open mouthed look of astonishment on his face. Toronto city hall is in the background

Three people sit on the bench beside the fountain at Nathan Phillips Square. Their backs are to the camera, they are looking towards the 3D Toronto sign that is covered with black and white photos for Inside Out project. Toronto city hall is in the background

A seagull stands on photos of people that are glued to the concrete

Nathan Phillips Square after Nuit Blanche when Inside Out projects are still on the ground, and a farmers market is going on around it.

below: There were a number of other sites around the city that participated in this project including  a wall at Mel Lastman Square in North York.

A wall alongside a sidewalk ramp is covered with black and white photos of people's faces.

below: There was also a wall on the southwest side of Coxwell subway station that was covered.

exterior concrete wall covered with black and white photos of people

exterior concrete wall covered with black and white photos of people

#IOPToronto | #snb2015 | #snbTO | #share3DTO

Lots more info about Inside Out can be found here.

cover_inside_out

a cityscape, two bunnies and a chicken

Posted: August 11, 2015 in graffiti and street art
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Murals and street art seen in a nameless alley in Kensington Market area,
near Kensington Ave and St Andrew Street.
It’s the alley that Mona Lisa watches over the entrance to.

a mural on a wall in an alley, a city scene (no people) in grey tones. A man is sitting on the stairs beside the mural and a green car is parked there too

wide angle shot of a mural on a wall in an alley, city buildings in grey tones covers the lower floor of a two storey building.
close up of a portion of the grey cityscape mural

a wall in a lane, a large red chicken head painting is on the right and it seems to be looking down the lane. A woman is standing in the lane

street art painting of a large brown chicken with a red face. The signature on the painting says Jonny Cakes
a yellow poser bunny on a wall in an alley beside a door that is covered with tags including oreks

looking down the alley, wide angle shot, poser bunny mural on the right side, red tag graffiti on the left. At the end of the alley a man stands with his dog, a woman with a white umbrella is passing by

a poser bunny street art painting at the corner of a building is in the foreground, people on Kensington Ave are in the background

Water’s Edge

Posted: July 25, 2015 in galleries, locations
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Water’s Edge
A Pan-American photography exhibit
produced by No.9: Contemporary Art & the Environment.

Two venues are involved, Union Station and Pearson Airport.  The photos below represent a sample of the photos on show at Union Station.

 

below: Bridge Glacier, British Columbia 2012, by James Balog, part of his study of vanishing glaciers.

large photographs, part of an exhibit at Union Station in Toronto -

below: Two black and white photographs by Sebastiao Salgado,
part of a photographic project titled ‘Genesis’.
One aim of ‘Genesis’ was to examine “the fragile beauty and grandeur of nature”.

large photographs, part of an exhibit at Union Station in Toronto -

below:  ‘The Anavilhanas’ taken in Amazonas Brazil, 2009 by Sebastiao Salgado.
Located on the Rio Negro, the Anivilhanas Archipelago is the world’s largest fresh water archipelago.  It is an unique ecosystem with over 400 river islands spread over 90 km.  The Rio Negro is 27 km at its widest point. During the rainy season (November to April) many of these islands are underwater.

large black and white photograph, part of an exhibit at Union Station in Toronto -

below: ‘Sarnia’ by Gustavo Jononovich, taken in Sarnia, from his “Free Shipping” series.

large photographs, part of an exhibit at Union Station in Toronto -

below: ‘Georgian Bay #1, Four Winds’, Point-au-Baril, Ontario  2009, by Edward Burtynsky.
This picture is part of his Water Series, a series that looks at changing water systems around the world as well as the relationship that we have with these water systems.

large photographs, part of an exhibit at Union Station in Toronto -

The exhibit ends on the 15th of August.

#myhomewaters

Lansdowne billboards

Posted: May 21, 2015 in public art
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Flat Death and Contemporary Floral Arrangements,
by Sarah Cwynar,
large photographs on billboards on Lansdowne Avenue,
Part of CONTACT Photography Festival.

below: ‘Flat Death’ at Lansdowne and Dundas West.
Black and white photos of books on four billboards.

billboards above a used car lot, 3 billboards with large black and white photos of books.

Two billboards side by side each with a large photo of old books in black and white

bikes parked in a bike stand in the foreground, a used car lot in the background. Above the car lot is a billboard with a black and white photo of old books. A Lansdowne TTC bus is on the right hand side.

 below:  ‘Contemporary Floral Arrangements’ on the corner of Lansdowne and College

The foundation for ‘Contemporary Floral Arrangements’ are 1960’s photographs of floral arrangements.  Small objects such as key chains, plastic bits, buttons, spools of thread, etc are then placed on the photos, matching colour and tone.

An building with a 'car wash' sign on it but the windows are covered with a sign for "engima' cond development. On the roof of the building is a billboard with a large photo of a flower arrangement.

The idea that this is an ad made of things that no one wants may be interesting in theory but in practice it’s just a pretty picture.  Because of the location of the billboard, the details of the picture can’t be seen.

At an intersection, An building with a 'car wash' sign on it but the windows are covered with a sign for "engima' cond development. On the roof of the building is a billboard with a large photo of a flower arrangement.

Memory Unearthed

Posted: February 17, 2015 in galleries
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Photographs of the Lodz Ghetto (Poland 1940-1945)
by Henryk Ross,
at the Art Gallery of Ontario until 14 June 2015

Ross was a Polish Jewish photographer and one of the official Lodz ghetto photographers under the Nazi regime.

A girl is standing in front a photography exhibit where many black and white photos are grouped together to form one big picture.

In the autumn of 1944 as the Lodz ghetto was being shut down, Ross buried his 6000 negatives in jars.  The Red Army liberated Lodz in January of 1945 after which Ross unearthed his negatives.  Water damaged about half of them.  Of the surviving 3000 negatives, about 200 form the ‘Memory Unearthed’ exhibit.

Close up of photo display showing black and white photos of people in portrait like photos.

Some of the photos are ordinary pictures – portraits of people, children playing.  Other photos look ordinary until you learn the context, what is really happening in the picture.  Many photos document suffering and despair.  They elicit a lot of uncomfortable emotions but as an historical record the collection is excellent as well as much needed.

a few guys hanging out

Posted: February 11, 2015 in general Toronto
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A few guys that I encountered the other day.

black and white paper graffiti of a man in grey pants, white shirt, and tie. He has two black and white faces instead of hands. Someone has scrawled words on the hands.
A deflated inflatable Santa Claus is hanging from a hydro pole in an alley beside a garage door with a graffiti man on it.

A large pinkish man's face, with big blue eys, and large hands

close up of man's face painted on a garage door. You can see one ear, the nose and the mouth.

Street art painting of two men's heads. Both have beards. One is wearing a black crown and the other has a red hat and a red & black plaid shirt on

 

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