Stephen Stober, "Self-portrait, National Olympic Stadium, Phnom Penh, Cambodia," 2014
inkjet digital print on baryta paper (courtesy Portrait Gallery of Canada)
The Portrait Gallery of Canada has mounted an inaugural show on its new website, offering Canadians a taste of what may be ahead if the new non-profit group raises enough money for a bricks-and-mortar space.
Personae: Indigenous and Canadian Portraits 1861-2019 mostly features photographs of ordinary folk from a range of backgrounds, including a Quebec farmer, a man posed with his car and women at a Toronto refugee shelter.
There are some famous people – notably the late Arnaud Maggs' 1977 police-style mug-shots, front and side, of Leonard Cohen. Canada's early history is represented by an 1861 portrait of an unidentified Montreal woman by William Notman, one of the era's leading photographers, but most images are from the 1970s onward.
Robert Tombs, a member of the gallery's board and the president of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, curated the show, which includes his 1985 work, Portrait of the Artist as Aubrey Beardsley (apologies to Frederick Evans).
There are two drawings, one by Romanian-born Montreal artist Peter Krausz and the other by Saulteaux artist Wally Dion, the latter the show's only obvious connection to Western Canada.
The lead image – the one used to promote the show on the gallery's homepage – is an interesting choice with an international flavour.
A 2014 self-portrait by Toronto photographer Stephen Stober, it shows him taking his own image in a mirror at the National Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In the background is a large sports oval. The mirror's surface is scratched and lends the image a rather opaque quality.
Stober writes on his webpage that the stadium was used as a killing field by the Khmer Rouge and never served as an Olympic venue.
"Now, the upper level functions as an aerobic fitness circuit, where free classes are given accompanied by a boom box. I arrived later in the afternoon by tuk tuk, and took the long climb up. The temperature drops to a more comfortable 28 C by then. I was loaded up with four cameras . . . At the moment this was taken, I imagined what it looked like when local city folks were rounded up and brought there. Not a trace of the past remains."
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Christine Fitzgerald, "Kahentínehtha’ Horn," 2019
platinum print from wet collodion photographic plate (courtesy Portrait Gallery of Canada)
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Christine Fitzgerald, "Kaniehtí:io Horn," 2017
platinum print from wet collodion photographic plate (courtesy Portrait Gallery of Canada)
The show also features three images from a series of women from a Kanien-kehà:ka (Mohawk) family that Ottawa photographer Christine Fitzgerald shot between 2017 and 2019 using a large box camera and the wet-plate collodion process.
Included are matriarch activist Kahentínehtha’ Horn, who played a role in the 1990 Oka Crisis, and her daughters, Kahente Horn-Miller, an assistant professor at Carleton University’s School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies, and Gemini-award nominated actor Kaniehtí:io Horn.
Other artists featured in the show are Toronto documentary photographer Ruth Kaplan, Herbert Taylor, a Quebec photographer, and New Brunswick's Thaddeus Holownia and Karen Stentaford.
The idea of creating a national museum devoted to portraiture has been around for two decades but somehow has never came to fruition.
An earlier proposal was cancelled by the former Conservative government, and this latest effort, led by a high-level group of Canadians, has seen the recent creation of a non-profit society and the new website at portraitcanada.ca.
The group's next job is to raise funds for a physical space in the National Capital Region to host the gallery's exhibitions and programs. ■
Personae: Indigenous and Canadian Portraits 1861-2019 can be viewed indefinitely on the website of the Portrait Gallery of Canada.
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