Eye on the Esplanade: Travelling arts exhibition features 59 Alberta artists
By Medicine Hat News on October 12, 2018.
This September the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling Exhibition Program (TREX) Southeast began its 2018-2019 season. Fourteen exhibitions will tour the region from communities as far as Stettler to Milk River and many places in between. The exhibitions feature artworks created by Alberta artists and are displayed in schools, public libraries, and community venues such as Rolling Hills School, Foremost Library and the Helen Schuler Nature Centre in Lethbridge. This year the program will mount a total of 85 exhibitions throughout the Southeast region, featuring 59 Alberta artists. Twelve of those artists are featured in In the Moment, a selection of photographs from the province’s permanent collection.
In the Moment is an exhibition of works spanning 1977 to 2010. The 17 silver gelatin black and white photographs feature the work of artists John Fukushima, Douglas Curran, Orest Semchishen, Eleanor Lazare, Harry Palmer, Randall Adams, Sima Khorrami, Tim Van Horn, Craig Richards, Harry Palmer, George Webber and Gerald Hewko. These portraits capture a variety of captivating characters situated in intriguing environments from all over the world. Some have been taken right here in the backyard of Alberta and some were documented as far away as Thailand and Guatemala.
Photography has drastically changed since the evolution of the smart phone. Years ago people would witness something and say, ‘I wish I had a camera.’ To see and experience the world, we don’t only look at images; we take them, and often. In 2011, it was reported that Facebook’s 750 million users uploaded and shared 100 million photos every day. Everyone has a camera, and it seems as though everything is documented: breakfast sandwiches to double rainbows to cats doing funny things. Rarely do these pictures actually leave the device they were captured on, unlike bygone times when film cameras were the status quo.
So what have we lost and what have we gained by photography’s technological advancements? Is the quality of digital prints comparable to silver gelatin photographs? The first photographic paper using a gelatin emulsion was invented in 1873, 145 years ago. The works in this exhibition were taken over four decades, captured on 35-millimetre film cameras. The artists developed their images in a dark room, using the silver gelatin process. Gelatin, an animal protein, is used as an emulsion, to bind light sensitive silver salts to a paper or other support. After a brief exposure to a negative (under an enlarger), the print is immersed in chemicals to allow the image to develop, or emerge fully.
When this process is successfully achieved it produces a true black and white tone. Unlike digital prints, silver gelatin prints have a physical presence. The black and white imagery is evocative; subjects within the image are captivating, drawing the viewer into a time and space.
Photographs engage us optically, neurologically, intellectually, emotionally, viscerally and physically. The people documented in these works were captured in a moment: The two young women in Tim Van Horn’s Ruthie or the woman reading the paper in Jeannie — Silk Hat Restaurant by Randall Adams. They remind us of our own moments, to take time to reminisce, and celebrate the human spirit.
Xanthe Isbister is curator of travelling exhibitions at the Esplanade.
