function issue 14

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14

Issue 14

EDITORIAL TEAM Danielle Campbell Meaghan Foley Gerald Larocque Samantha Spatari www.imagearts.ryerson.ca/function functionmagazine@gmail.com Function Magazine 122 Bond St. Toronto, ON M5B 2K3 Faculty Advisor// Thierry Gervais, PhD Film Crew: Camera and Video Editors// Serene Husni, Chenxing Liu Copy Editor// Molly Kalkstein Web Designer// Ian Bradshaw Function Web App// Lynsie Roberts Transcribing and Editing Interviews// Christian Arab, Callan Field, Justin Friesen, Jessica Glasgow, Ilana Lightman, Lee McVittie, Chelsea Pottage, Andrew Schmidt, Steve Thorson Printing // Colour Innovations - Matthew Alexander

Aaron Friend Lettner // Sean 2010 (cover image) Summer Leigh // Bayside II (previous page)

All images the image-maker credited. The right of all persons so credited to be identified as the authors of their work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright Act of Canada 1985. 2013 Function Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduction of Function Magazine in whole or in part is strictly prohibited without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. All releases are the responsibility of the contributor. Function Magazine is in no way responsible or liable for the accuracy of the information contained herein nor for any consequences arising from interpretation. All of the above activities shall be subjeted to Canadian Law.

Interviews

Mark Peckmezian Dominic Nahr Byron A. Martin Alice Zilberberg Annie MacDonell

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Essays The Pensive Spectator 110 Ryerson Image Centre 132 Student Portfolios

Shannon Rolanty Mitchell Gosse Ryan Walker JC Pinheiro Jeff Carlson Liam Coo Mary Anderson Riley Snelling

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Function Online

Web Content 138

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FUNCTION ISSUE 14 As graduating students, we felt it was important to revise the visual concept of Function: we kept the same logo and size of the magazine in order to continue the tradition of the publication, but changed the layout of the content, producing a quirky new design that represents who we are as editors. We wanted to focus on the opportunities available for students after graduation, so we showcased work from the School of Image Arts’ Photography, Film, New Media, and MFA programs alongside interviews with Ryerson Alumni and professional artists.

For this issue, we decided that Function should act as a guide for incoming and current students, inviting them to explore all the possibilities that the School of Image Arts has to offer. To achieve this goal, we revised the design, allotting more space for the selected student portfolios and interviews with established artists, and discarded the (now obsolete) DVD, choosing instead to use Function’s website as an extension of the magazine. We wanted a means to properly show the work of everybody from the school in order to make the magazine resonate for all Image Arts students. Not all art can be adequately represented in print form, so the website presents the work of students who are using mediums such as installation media and video. In addition, the recorded interviews of featured artists will be available online, while the transcribed and edited versions can be found in the magazine.

Our new building not only houses the School of Image Arts, but also the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC).

We therefore included an essay about the RIC in order to provide students with information about the opportunities available to them at this new facility. We believe that the Image Arts building is no longer just part of a school but of a community, and we wanted to demonstrate this in the extended version of Function. We will always remember our time at Ryerson, and the knowledge and experience gained at the School of Image Arts will accompany us in our endeavours long after graduation.

Danielle Campbell

Meaghan Foley

Portraits by // Jeffrey Carlson Wet plate by // Meaghan Foley

Gerald Larocque

Samantha Spatari

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Parker Kay // Arbutus & Nik

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MARK PECKMEZIAN Interview Graduating from Ryerson’s Photography program in 2010, photographer Mark Peckmezian speaks to Function on his thoughts about art school, his journey after graduating, and the upcoming plans for his work.

Interview by // Justin Friesen FN // Well, we can start now, I don’t want to make the transition between real life and interviews too harsh.

MP // That’s funny, that’s a good way of putting it. There shouldn’t be a subversion.

FN // Sometimes when you do it and it’s like, “Okay, it’s ready to go,” then everyone shuts the fuck up.

MP // It’s the same in a photo shoot. I don’t want everyone to become too formal because then it’s like a business transaction, you’re the sitter and I’m the photographer. I don’t like that, it makes me uncomfortable.

FN // You don’t want someone modelling for you.

MP // The less modelling the better, basically. It’s a really interesting process that’s worthy of looking at as a social dynamic when you’re taking a portrait of someone. It’s a funny thing I’m always thinking about.

FN // Are you working on anything particular right now?

MP // I just finished a couple of big jobs and now I’m just catching up on my own personal work. This isn’t photo work, but I’m working on getting a visa to move to the States. It’s a huge process, really a pain in the ass. So I’m doing that now with a lawyer, so that’s a big project just getting that done.

FN // That must not be a fun process.

MP // Oh yeah, it’s the worst, it’s so tedious. Basically you have to prove that you’re worthy of going there. So basically you have to show them any kind of proof you can that you’ve been published or this or that. You have to find evidence for everything and back up the evidence with even more evidence, it’s just a huge pain in the ass. It’s also really expensive, but it’ll pay off in the long term I think.

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FN // You work in portraiture, and you’ve taken photos of dogs, and you’re always shooting at parties, you’ve got snapshot photography, documentary photography. What would you say is a string that binds those all together?

MP // I’m pretty convinced they’re all together, they’re all one thing. I don’t know why, or how. I never planned to shoot the range of things that I do, I just follow my excitement in the moment again and again and again, and this is just what happens in the end. I don’t really think long term like that, I just work on whatever I’m interested in.

FN // You’ve been shooting plants recently.

MP // Yeah, a lot of plants and still lifes. Even drawings of plants, or graphics. I think it’s going to be the subject of my solo show in the fall at O’Born.

FN // And that’s quite a difference from your very portraitheavy first show. Is this something you want to do differently?

MP // I sort of feel like that show has given me some closure on some portraits. I’m not done with doing portraits, but I feel like I’m free to experiment with other things. I didn’t ever start from the premise that I wanted to do something different, I just felt this itch to shoot plants. It’s not about plants though, it could be some other subject. It’s like the dog photos. They’re not about dogs, they’re just about dogs as token subjects to express yourself through. It could be anything else. It’s the exact same conceit with the plant photos. It’s not about plants, it’s just a vehicle for expressing other things about photography. I think all the plant photos are about photography.

FN // You’ve been fortunate to have some pretty high-end jobs, shooting for Report on Business, Bloomberg Businessweek, and The Walrus, shooting notable figures such as Bell CEO George A. Cope. But even in these jobs your style is prevalent. How do you keep your art true even in a corporate job?

MP // I feel fortunate to be able to do that. I feel like that’s not how it works with most people. It’s like, as a photographer doing commercial work you’re a tradesperson in the same way as a plumber. You know how to use these tools and someone hires you and someone tells you what to do, and you just do it. So having any sort of job where you are allowed or encouraged to be creative or to shoot it in your own voice, that’s like a privilege. I don’t know how I’ve lucked into doing that kind of work, but it didn’t always happen that way. I want to do every job in my own way, but it’s not always the case. In fact it’s really rare.

because I’m getting paid and I’m also being encouraged to do my own thing. I’ve used some of the work that I’ve shot commercially as personal work because I like it a lot. I just shot a job a couple weeks ago for The New Yorker. My very favourite jobs are the travelling jobs where they send you off somewhere to do a portrait of someone, wherever. So we went down to Connecticut and I photographed this artist in his barn and it was just a great time. They cover every expense, you’re travelling on their dime with your friends, those jobs are the good jobs, the exciting ones.

FN // But in a way they’re likely hiring you for your style too.

FN // So you’re a Ryerson grad, you graduated in 2010. Did you find value in your BFA or in student life as a photographer?

MP // This is why I feel so lucky, because I feel like I’ve somehow defined myself in a certain way and people wouldn’t hire me for a tradesperson job too often, they would hire me for my own style, and that’s a good place to be as a photographer. I defined my style and I get hired for that style. It’s win-win

MP // Yeah, I would say that those four years I learned a lot and it was a good four years. I’m not sure how much credit I can give to the Image Arts program. I feel like that time of

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your life is really important in general, you’re becoming an adult. I feel like it’s going to be a consequential four years whether you’re in school or not. I don’t feel like I learned very much from the actual classes. I think I learned from just having four years to just not think about anything else but photography. You’re buying four years of time to really be selfish and not worry about a day job and just focus on photography, and that’s the real value of it. I think from classes I learned what not to do, what I don’t like, and that is a kind of valuable knowledge. I don’t think that’s what they’d like or want to advertise, you know, “Come to Ryerson so you can learn what not to do.” It isn’t their game plan, but it’s what I learned from the classes.

FN // Do you think something of what you’re criticizing is inherent in an arts education?

MP // I feel like there’s something insane about even the concept of art school. It’s like incoherent. There are always things you can learn, the history and the theory, but what’s really important you can’t learn. So I feel like I went into it here knowing that, and I still got some value out of it, so I feel it’s not a total waste of time.

FN // How is it different being in the post-student world, AKA real life?

MP // You can’t know until you’re done but school is this big bubble. I wanted to be in the real world with the good and the bad, it’s more meaningful. You’re not in this artificial world. It’s more scary but it’s more exciting. There’s more risk but there’s more reward.

FN // It shaped your life, but do you think it changed your personal work?

MP // I always tried to ignore what the profs wanted anyways and tried to do my own thing, but I feel like absent any other pressure in the school you’d be more free to be yourself and work on what you’re excited about and not anything else. I remember finishing school and being so excited because I could devote all my time to what I want to do and not waste any time going through hoops.

FN // O’Born Contemporary gallery, who you’re represented by, explains that your work is an attempt to leverage the analogue and digital divide. What does that mean to you?

MP // The reason why I started shooting in film was a deliberate choice because back in first or second year, I just felt that there was something lacking in digital. You know, it’s funny, it’s the exact same process, you’re shooting on film, printing on paper, but it’s given new meaning now in this new context. That’s more what I’m talking about. Shooting on film means more today because of digital, the context has changed and so it’s given new meaning. That’s what’s interesting about it.

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Kyra Power // Lost Shore

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Leila Syed-Fatemi // Chador I Chador II

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SHANNON ROLANTY Portfolio

Still Amongst the Living Still Amongst the Living documents loss and absence through the empty rooms of a house still inhabited. These images are reflective of my late grandfather’s lingering presence in the home he shared with my grandmother. This home has been part of our family for over forty-four years and is saturated with memories that I want to preserve in their truest form, before my grandmother decides to pack them up and move away. The title of this series was inspired by something my grandmother told me when I asked why she continued to sleep in her living room chair instead of the bed she once shared with my grandfather. She said that looking out at the lights of cars driving past her window at night reminded her that she was still amongst the living.

This series exposes the empty rooms of her house, capturing both the continued absence and presence of my grandfather’s memory. While it was a family member’s death that initially drew me to photograph this subject, the series became more about the idea of homes themselves and the objects we keep in them. These spaces are decorated in ways that reflect the owners’ identities and generations. My grandmother’s home comes across as dated and cluttered, and the details recorded in these photographs reveal how these types of homes have not changed with a generation that is ultimately disappearing. By documenting my grandparents’ home, I am capturing it as it was lived in, and expressing the memories of both the space and the people I shared it with. This house belongs to more than just my grandmother; our whole family has left its imprint through the memories we created there. I consider these photographs to be environmental portraiture, as the rooms of my grandparents’ house speak to how they spent their time in them and how they expressed their identities through the objects they kept within them. Still Amongst the Living emphasizes the juxtapositions between house and home, absence and presence, history and memory.

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MITCHELL GOSSE Portfolio

William Baker William Baker Park is an abandoned military community in the North York neighbourhood of Downsview. Since the 1950s, the houses served to shelter the families of military officials at nearby Canadian Forces Base Downsview. In 2008, the Canadian Forces Housing Authority initialized the process of eliminating all its subsidized military housing, and the collection of homes was soon after slated for demolition.

William Baker explores the representation of suburbanization in the military context and in relation to notions of documentation, romanticization, and photography as a form of cultural communication. In attaching themselves to deeply embedded cultural ideals rooted within notions of utopian, idyllic lifestyles, the images harken to our longing and desire for pastoral escape. In the discourse of social documentary, we are encouraged to believe that such a place exists; yet upon further critique, their meanings become unstable as we negotiate and re-negotiate the terms upon which to read them.

As a primarily photographic series, William Baker is about the act of depiction; but while the objects cannot be taken as visual facts alone, just as images cannot exist solely as symbolic texts, photographs afford the viewer a unique experience, greater than the sum of both. In sustaining the ability to represent the experience of viewing, photographs exist subjectively while simultaneously granting the ability to experience the presence of the referent—an experience contingent on the very frameworks that traditionally challenge the photograph’s documentative claims.

If we are to understand photography on these terms, then we might note altogether that the images exist as the absence of that which they seek to represent. In this way, photography both props up and submits to itself. We rise to the belief that the photographs are of something, while granting them the benefit of separation and falsity; they are not the thing itself, nor can we be sure that the “thing itself ” ever existed. Such questions—those of indexicality and “truth value”—are therefore irrelevant to the series, and to the way photographs invariably function. In this way, the images in William Baker are rendered a series of decisively fabricated relics—fictional realities unconcerned with notions of indexicality. Instead, they become the concern of language and communication, as centred upon photography’s inherent depictiveness. William Baker is a series about absence, built upon and mediated through a complex process of cultural layering and interpretation.

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Justin Friesen // Left: Smokestack Above: Red Flag Bridge over Yumuri Valley

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Claudia Puchiele // Storm King and Bathroom

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Summer Leigh // Eric (Toronto Strangers)

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RYAN WALKER Portfolio

Elisabeth In 2009, my grandmother Elisabeth was diagnosed with breast cancer. Soon after, I began to photograph her recovery from a mastectomy, and her renewed life in the absence of my grandfather, who passed 11 years prior. In March 2012, the cancer returned and Elisabeth passed away one month later. Now, her home and surrounding property lie empty as preparations are made to sell the piece of land.

Elisabeth is a self-reflexive exploration of comprehending mortality, mourning, and healing. This body of work attempts to weave an intricate family history with an exploration of place and identity, while speaking to questions of sickness, love, and loss. Having evolved from a documentation of recovery to become a personal journey of catharsis, this series examines both physical and emotional loss through still moments reflecting a life that has long passed.

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DOMINIC NAHR Interview

Interview by // Samantha Spatari Dominic Nahr graduated from Ryerson University in 2008 and is a contract photographer for TIME magazine. Nahr joined Magnum Photos in 2010 and is also represented by O’Born Contemporary in Toronto.

FN // So Dominic, we understand that while living in Hong Kong you established yourself as a photojournalist working as a staff photographer for the South China Morning Post. As an already established photographer, what caused you to seek formal education?

DN // I had already enrolled into the film program at Ryerson before becoming a photographer, and when I went back home, I became a photographer and decided to do full-time photography at the paper. I took a break from Ryerson and went back because I wanted to finish University and think about where I wanted to go. I didn’t want to become a newspaper photographer. I wanted to do what I do now, and I just needed that extra time to learn about that kind of photography, read books, and work on my exhibitions.

FN // What drew you to Ryerson?

DN // I had never been to Canada and I didn’t really want to go to University, but high schools were very adamant at getting everybody to University. I had Canadian citizenship, so I thought, “Okay, if I’m going to go somewhere, I’ll go to Canada.” I got lucky and was accepted to Ryerson. I remember realizing how important Ryerson was, and feeling that fate brought me there.

FN // What brought you from film to photojournalism?

DN // Film was good in the first year, but I wanted to do things by myself. I wanted to work as hard as I can and didn’t want to rely on anybody else. I wanted to put all the pressure on myself. With film, you know, you start to break up the responsibilities. I wanted to have sole responsibility of my future and I felt like photography gave me that opportunity. Secondly, I like being out in the field. With film, there is a lot of preparation when coming up with concepts. Film is very much internal. With photography, you are creative out in the field. I’ve always said I’d go back and make films, which will happen. I like the creative aspect of putting things together. My work is quite cinematic, or at least dramatic, almost the way I would approach a film.

So I think there is definitely that influence from film.

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FN // In 2007, you were not only working with magazines such as Newsweek and GQ, but also The FADER and The Globe and Mail, all while attending Ryerson’s program. Can you describe the steps you took to achieve such success as a freelance photographer so early on in your career?

DN // I started running out of money so one of the big motivators was that I had to look for work, I had to work as a photographer. I gave myself opportunities for people to see my work, so I entered a lot of competitions, like College Photographer of the Year. Nobody in my class was even applying to these awards, but I was. It resulted in me often placing first or second. I used anything I could to meet editors.

Not the assistant, not the assistant-of-the-assistant, but the editor. They wouldn’t see me the first time, so I would go a second time, then a third. I can’t tell you the amount of times I went to see the editor of TIME magazine. It’s just about being persistent.

FN // In 2010, two years after graduating from Ryerson, you joined Magnum Photos. How did you gain that position?

DN // A lot of luck and being in the right place at the right time. My work in Congo got a lot of recognition and awards, and was included in Visa pour l’Image, the biggest photojournalism festival in the world. That helped a lot. I started working with TIME magazine more, and was working with National Geographic. So people kind of were surprised at my young age of 27, and I think that got people’s attention.

FN // Working with TIME magazine and National Geographic, could you describe the amount of involvement you have with the selection, or the process of selection for your images used by your clients?

DN // I became a contract photographer for TIME magazine. There are only six of us that work on contract, so it’s a very close relationship. I usually work with the same writer. In Africa, there’s one writer for the entire Sub-Saharan region, which is 50-plus countries. We’ll find ourselves in Somalia or Congo or South Africa or Senegal, and we’ll cover the whole area. My editor pretty much says, “Go! Just do it,” and the writer and I will figure out what the story is and then I’ll make the pictures. I choose my selection of images and I send those pictures to the editors of TIME. A lot of the time they make really great edits and layouts in the magazine. I usually get told if it’s a cover image or not.

FN // Looking through all your images, there is always a written component. Are these from the writer?

DN // No, I write that. As a photojournalist, you have to write your own captions. They are the evidence, they are the information of what you’re looking at: where it’s shot, who it is, and when it is. The photographer is responsible for them to be accurate.

FN // You currently have a show at the Ryerson Image Centre. How do you find your work transitions from a mediabased publication to the gallery?

DN // I’ve always liked the gallery space because people spend more time looking at the images than they do in magazines and on the Internet. People’s attention

spans are so short. In the gallery, it really sits in people’s minds; they can look at detail, they can look into eyes. In that sense, I’m really glad I can present my work in galleries.

FN // As an alumnus of Ryerson, how does it feel to have your work proudly displayed in our gallery space?

DN // It’s great. The first time I walked through it I was pretty impressed. It was strange. I had been in that space before and the transformation of the building is quite wild. I’m very honoured to be a part of that space. It was also surreal to have an exhibition there after Michael Snow.

FN // Part of this exhibition is from your work entitled Captive State, which brings

light to the famine and civil unrest in southern Somalia. Can you talk a little bit about the formal considerations you utilized in communicating the content of your images and subjects to your audience?

DN // We decided to do a bigger print show because my previous show about Sudan had larger prints, which looked great, and I was happy that people really responded to the scale. I thought in that space it would work really well to have the Somali pictures of the same size. The content of the work was quite complicated and horrific at points, so I thought that scale would address these issues and produce a visual impact. Certain photos deserve to be life-sized. You really have to isolate what you like.

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FN // You have stunning colour images. How do you find that saturated colour images communicate differently than the traditional black and white images of photojournalism?

DN // I like black and white. I just don’t understand it. I’m attracted to colour. Even when I take pictures that aren’t news images, my first attraction is to the colours that pop out. I like having control over colour. I do like the black and white photographs of Don McCullin and James Nachtwey, and the early war and reportage photographers. But I also like Larry Burrows’s pictures in Vietnam in colour, because you always see Vietnam War pictures in black and white. Colour simply speaks to me more.

FN // You spoke earlier about film and your cinematic view, which have a great influence on your work. As you are shooting through the lens of a camera, do you see it through a film perspective or as a still frame?

DN // That’s a good question. I think it depends on which camera I use. If I’m using a DSLR, then yes. The focus hits the point of what you want and everything goes blurry. The feeling is hard to describe. Shooting for me is the connection between your emotions and the mechanics of your fingers. The brain is switched off, but is still mindful of danger and your surroundings. The picture making comes from the heart.

FN // You mentioned that you are in these places for such a short time and there is always this whole idea of threats or being captured. How do you feel when you are working in these conditions? Are there ever moments when you are truly nervous or scared?

history, but I’d rather be where the history is happening. You can read books on history, which is great, but I’d rather witness the moments themselves. I think that’s what keeps you going: the yearning to be at those pivotal moments where time stops and history is made.

FN // What’s interesting is that, as the image maker, you are capturing what is in front of you, rather than how modern news portrays a subjective point of view.

DN // It’s quite innocent in a way. You look at the subject without any bias, which can often cause surprise. There are a lot of bad, heavy issues. Yet there’s these moments that are very beautiful and have a lot of emotional strength. You can even be surprised by the strength within people. That’s why you go back: to be surprised.

FN // As an accomplished photojournalist, what is the most important piece of advice you would give to young photographers coming from programs similar to that of Ryerson?

DN // I think the main thing I would say is to be true to your interests and be true to your view of the world. I think a lot of photojournalism right now seems very formulaic. They get their digital camera, they get all their equipment, they know what makes a “good” news picture, and they take it. I find myself bored with those pictures. I think the best thing to do is to go into situations and find your own pictures, not re-create pictures you’ve seen before. Find your own sequencing. Find your own “voice.” I think that’s really the key.

Editors notice this. There’s already enough out there. Having an identity is key.

DN // Yes. I’m nervous at times. You think, “Why the hell am I here?” or, “This is ridiculous.” I take all the necessary precautions to try and stay safe. The time limit is a factor. I don’t want to stay there too long in case someone is informing another person to tell them that I’m there, then they get into a car, grab their stuff, and come towards me. You know that will take them about 20 minutes, so I’m trying to stay shorter than that. You take these kinds of calculated risks.

Nothing is random. I think about every part of the risk.

FN // You’ve obviously experienced a lot for a person as young as yourself. What inspired you to go into your field and what inspires you to keep motivated as you continue to work?

DN // I was interested to see the world for myself. I was frustrated by reports from these places. I didn’t know if I was being told the truth or not. I find it bizarre how the media can make things really dramatic. I wanted to see for myself what was really going on and try to understand it. I enjoy FN 053

Alaric Johnson // Hillside

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Dylan McArthur // Busker Festival Right : Queen & Ryerson Ave, Eaton Center

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AJ Watson // Texas Big Beat Above: Gart and Darley

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Karen Labis // Winter Sports and A Hunt

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BYRON A. MARTIN Portfolio // Aaron Friend LettnerInterview Interview by // Meaghan Foley Byron A. Martin is an alumnus of Ryerson University and has had remarkable success in the film industry for over 25 years. Martin is a producer, developing independent film, television, and documentary projects.

FN // Byron, thanks for sitting down with us, we really appreciate it. So, you’re a Ryerson graduate and you’ve been working in various fields in the film industry for 25 years.

BM // I started in the business writing and producing radio and television. I’m originally from Edmonton and I came out here to go to film school.

I already had a background in production, and I worked at the National Film Board. I worked at the CBC as a commercial writer and producer, and then I did freelance work. So I had a very strong production background before I came to film school.

FN // Since then, you’ve gained some pretty impressive credits: Wild Cherry, Death Race, and American Pie. What was it like working on high-profile projects?

BM // When you’re doing American Pie projects—I produced two, you know—it’s like going to summer camp. Both were Universal projects for the studio.

They were really talented young people and it was a joy!

The first movie was called The Naked Mile, it’s an actual event that takes place at the University of Michigan. So, I hired two thousand naked people to run the naked mile, and uh, yeah, it was an experience!

Everyone shows up, they get naked, we shoot, and we do a lot of different things to protect the performers, such as put up curtains and hire police. But people had a great time! It was a lot of fun! And then we fol-

lowed the next summer with Beta House, which was at other locations where we shot at frat houses and at the University of Toronto. We shot on location at the studio. We had our own parties and events and a variety of naked people running around and doing random things, like people showed up and we threw an underwear party. There were people walking around in underwear on the lot. It was great! And people said, “Why can’t we do more films like this?”

FN // That sounds like just as much fun to be a part of.

BM // But every film has its own dynamic. There’s a different dynamic on Resident Evil than there is on American Pie, than there was on Wild Cherry, another great comedy we did. We had a great, talented cast and those are the type of movies you want to work on because they are filled with great energy and chemistry.

FN // What about one of the films like Resident Evil? Can you compare the two experiences?

BM // On Resident Evil, I did all the visual effects and stunts on the film. It’s shot with a lot of cranes and green screens, with many shots taking place in the studio. We also went to a lot of different locations. It is very complex, tedious work that takes a long time to put together because of all the effects.

It’s not really so much the performance as it is the special effects, and you’re playing a lot with the visual effects people. You’re really there to do the

work for them. It’s the shots that they need with respect to the work to manufacture these elements for the script, for the film. So you have to make sure that the screens are lit properly, that the action works, and that the stunts are in time when you crash the plane in the studio. We had scaffolding sixty feet in the air to throw a plane, you know, out onto the floor. It’s really labour intensive with very dynamic shots. The truth is, you have to take a great deal of continued discussion to make sure that things go properly, because you’re dealing with a large group of bodies who are very specialized in a specific range of effects.

FN // Going back to your time at Ryerson, we found out that you attended the first IMAX Filmmakers Symposium in England, and you were the only student to be selected to go from Ryerson.

BM // It was fantastic! They selected one film student from every film school in the world. There were so many people

BM // No, it’s just not for everyone, you know? And it’s hard. It’s hard to raise money to finance pictures. It’s hard to find something that you can talk people into investing in.

I’m casting a feature film that I’m producing right now. I’ve been working a year right now with another filmmaker in Montreal. We’ve hired Riley Keough, who is Elvis’s granddaughter. She’s my lead. Mia Kirshner has come aboard as one of my other cast members. And I’m trying to find the last two male leads. But it takes time, and it takes time to find a Canadian distributer. I have a sales agent. I have an equity investor. You have to put together all of these pieces of the puzzle. And you have to be enthusiastic about the project, and about its script. So you just keep going. And if you have something that you believe in, you just push forward, push forward, and you let everyone know. You ask that question, “Will you get involved? Are you interested?” This is what we’re doing. So you have to be very proactive. So if there’s anything that I can say in one word to sum it up: if you’re a student being proactive, be proactive.

YOU’RE YOUNG AND STARTING OUT, YOU’RE LOOKING TO BE ACCEPTED. IT DEPENDS ON BEING “WHEN TENACIOUS, ON NOT TAKING NO FOR AN ANSWER, AND BEING A PAIN IN THE ASS IN SOME CASES. ” from all over the world and they did their best to inspire us to make IMAX films. I’ve worked on five or six IMAX films in my career. I did the first IMAX feature of Titanica with Stephen Low. FN // How have found as much success as you have within your field, and what do you think was the most important career decision you made to get to where you are?

BM // Well, there’s no one single decision, I’ll tell you that.

There’s a lot of sacrifice in this business. When the phone rings, you go. As a freelancer you can’t pick and choose, and when you’re young and starting out, you’re looking to be accepted. It depends on being tenacious, on not taking no for an answer, and being a pain in the ass in some cases.

It’s a real demand on your time and sacrifice, and when the phone rings, you go. I mean sometimes you work Monday to Friday, and sometimes you work Tuesday to Saturday, and sometimes Wednesday to Sunday. There’s no, “I can’t this day,” or “It’s not good for me this day,” and “I can’t do this.” So you have to really dive head-in, and that’s it. It’s a big commitment. Out of our entire class, I think I’m the only one left that’s in production. That’s it, just me. So, it’s a….

FN // Cut-throat business.

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY Resident Evil: Afterlife, 2010 Wild Cherry, 2009 Death Race, 2008 American Pie Presents Beta House, 2007 American Pie Presents The Naked Mile, 2006 Save the Last Dance 2, 2006 The Chronicles of Riddick, 2004 X-Men, 2000

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JC PINHEIRO Portfolio

Surfing: United Kingdom COLD [KOHLD] 1. Having a relatively low temperature; having little or no warmth 2. Feeling an uncomfortable lack of warmth; chilled 3. Having a temperature lower than the normal temperature of the human body Being Canadian, surfing is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of the UK; in a country with vast coastlines and similar latitude to our own‌ there must be some waves?

Over a four-month stay from September to December 2012, weekends were spent travelling from the sandy beaches of Cornwall to the top of Scotland, where I sought out the waves and the surfers who endured the cold to embrace the sea.

There is little glory: heading to the beach before sunrise, frost coating the sand, wearing the thickest wetsuits available, duck-diving under waves and getting a brain freeze as you try to paddle out against the thick slabs. But in these places, we find a unique group of people scattered along the coastline, sharing the same love.

These portraits capture subjects on their way from the sea after surfing, as candidly as possible using a single shot with 4x5 view camera. The process honours both traditions of landscape photography and portraiture, and includes the element of risk much like the one the surfers take each time they paddle out. In this context they become psychological and environmental portraits, documents of love and commitment, and testaments to vitality.

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Portfolio

JEFFREY CARLSON

Architecture of Entertainment Drive-in theatres consist of two key architectural features: a screen and a projection house. Each is unique in build, size, and colour; however, each combination serves the same nostalgic function. Since the 1960s, mass suburbanization and the invention of the television ultimately led to the downfall of drive-in theatres. In Ontario, keeping drive-in theatres running has been an even greater challenge due to the limits set upon them by the changing seasons. Half of each year, these nostalgic icons sit dormant, their multi-acre lots appearing as white as their motionless screens. Void of moving imagery, these screens become architectural non-spaces, resembling blank white billboards and cutting a rectangular canvas in the landscape. Architecture of Entertainment documents these nostalgic places by investigating the architectural features that bring them to life.

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Rebekah Dueck // The Last 31 , 2012 Left: Meaghan Foley // K.O. 1990 - 2012, C.T. 1991 - 2012, T.T. 1990 - 2013, J.K. 1986 - 2013 and C.M. 1927 - 2012

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Nicole Glassman // Bird House

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LIAM COO Portfolio

The Found Spectacular This series of images takes found, everyday objects and re-contextualizes them as spectacular and surreal. As a whole, the work touches on narrative and the everyday; threads connect the work with the surrounding life in an urban environment and the disposable nature of society. Within each image there is a narrative that demands that the viewer confront these mysterious scenes, and the concept of the surreal—defined as having the disorienting and hallucinatory quality of a dream— becomes key to the work. The urban environment is seen as a place where the unbelievable can and does happen, especially in the evening. The urban environment combined with the nature found amongst the concrete becomes the setting. Slowly we see these objects integrating and becoming lost in the setting, to the point where there are no distinctions between the two. Light plays a key role in creating the surreal in these images; both the luminosity of the images and the twilight setting of much of the series become the theatrical elements. The found objects are ones that anyone would have in their own home or office or anywhere else visited on a daily basis. In the photographs, however, they turn into found sculptures and, by being photographed, can be appreciated for their forms.

These images show moments that defy our interpretation of the world around us, illustrating the characteristics of the madness and mystery behind the surrealism found in a narrative tableau.

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Take a seat This series explores new methods of constructing human portraiture within photographic practice. My goal was to create new ways of seeing the portrait, and in turn, to create new viewing experiences for the viewer. In each shot, the individual is situated in a traditional format, but they are also surrounded by traditional photographic equipment that would not normally be seen in a final image. As a result, the set‐up attempts to work as a commentary on the discourse surrounding human portraiture, particularly in relation to the notion of the “sitter” or the “constructed” portrait. It is this constructed element or the “making” of the photograph that unites the series.

MARY ANDERSON Portfolio

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Sarah Virag // Split Brain FN 091

Interview

ALICE ZILBERBERG

Alice Zilberberg is a recent graduate of Ryerson University’s photography program and has already established herself in the photography world, exhibiting her work in Canada and Japan as well as being published in numerous print and online magazines.

Interview by // Callan Field FN// Well Alice, welcome back to Ryerson. Does it feel good to be back?

AZ// Yeah, I haven’t been here in a while, so it’s good, yeah. It looks nice, thanks for having me.

FN// It’s our pleasure. What brought you here to study photography at Ryerson?

AZ// I actually applied for the New Media program.

I originally applied into the program because I wasn’t really sure what direction I was going with my art, ‘cause I was doing a lot of painting before I was doing photography. And then my last year in high school, I started getting into photography. It’s a decision that came about in the first year of university.

FN// How did you end up doing digital manipulations?

AZ// It’s something that came naturally, because I did a lot of painting. And then when I discovered photography, I saw that I can use that medium to make these image composites and so I started working with Photoshop. Me and Photoshop became best friends. I don’t even call myself a photographer anymore, I’m an image-maker. Photography is just the medium.

FN// And do you feel that changing your title is an important distinction?

AZ// Yeah, definitely. It’s part of marketing myself as an artist, because it’s not just photography. It’s not that I go and I take images, and that’s what they are.

It’s really about the whole process and I organise everything; I take images from here and there and I put them together. So yeah, it is a very important distinction, because I consider myself an artist.

FN// Can you talk a little bit about working as a retoucher?

AZ // Well, I was offered a couple of jobs when I came out of school, ‘cause I guess my portfolio looks like a retoucher’s portfolio more than a photographer’s. So that’s kind of how it came about, so I do freelance photo-retouching for fine art photographers and commercial photographers as well.

FN// And related to that, what have you learned since graduating?

AZ// There’s been a million things that I’ve learned right after school. Aside from the other hundred things, one of the most important things is that you have to develop a formula for yourself. And just because you admire other photographers or another artist’s work and you see them work in a certain way, doesn’t mean that it’ll work for you. It’s whatever you adapt for yourself.

FN// I wanted to talk about your career as an artist. As artists, we often hear about the importance of connecting with curators, galleries, etc. What are your thoughts about networking?

AZ// Yeah, it’s definitely something that you have to do a lot in the beginning, and you hope to do it in a very professional way. The best way to start is to find someone who does similar work to what you do, someone who you admire and who works in the same industry and ask them what they did and how to get there. Ask anyone for their opinion, ‘cause people really like to give you their opinion, people really like giving advice. And then go to openings, go to events that you think would have people who can help you. And follow up on those, try to meet people, introduce yourself. Don’t pitch anything right then but afterwards get their business card, get an e-mail.

Say hi and then go from there. I think developing relationships like that in a friendly way gets you a lot of stuff.

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FN // We’ve talked a lot about your career, let’s talk about your work. Some of the themes you explore include gender, femininity, religion, and environmentalism. Yet you combine these more familiar issues with folklore and mythology. Why did you do this?

AZ // It might seem a little bit loaded for someone who doesn’t know the work, but for someone who knows me, it probably seems just about right. And again it’s something that I’ve been exploring even in my earlier work and my fairy tales. It’s always about bringing that female character back to her origins and I’m always pointing out the contrast between our values now and what they used to be. So for example in my last work it’s all about bringing the goddess back to what our values used to be for women and portraying her as a powerful being. And also the implications of religion, it’s something that I find funny ‘cause it’s something that’s new in my work but it’s always kind of existed there because I’m a big atheist. While my fairytales were self-portraits, now it’s a self-portrait in a way that it’s very much about what I’m thinking and my values. It’s very close and dear to my heart.

FN // In the series Goddess Almighty, there are several references to Christian iconography. Can you talk about these symbols?

AZ // One of the symbols that I’m referencing is the horns. These go back to the pig—the horned god in pagan religions who is associated with sexual implications and sexual freedom. And when Christianity came along they basically demonised him, so it was evil, and that’s why you see the devil with horns. So I put horns on the goddess to portray sexual freedom.

FN // One of the images depicts a goose emerging from the goddess. What is the meaning behind it?

AZ // That image is called Gaia Giving Birth to Uranus. Some of the works are named after the Greek goddess Gaia, who is Mother Earth in Greek mythology. I used her name because she’s just the most well known. But they’re all of Mother Nature in general, which is a lot older than that. But Gaia Giving Birth to Uranus came from the fact that Gaia gave birth to the sky and mountains and the seas. And Uranus is the sea. So she is physically giving birth to the sea, she’s giving birth to the Earth.

FN // What sort of plans do you have in the future?

AZ // For Alice Zilberberg photography? [Chuckles] Toronto has a very small art market. Toronto is just Toronto, Canada is just Canada. I’m currently trying to expand internationally, that’s the plan.

FN // Do you have any specific markets that you want to get to, or a plan for making that happen?

AZ // Oh, I can’t give away those secrets.

FN // You’d have to kill me?

AZ // Yeah, I’d have to kill you. I’ll let you know when I get there.

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Gerald Larocque // Deus Ex Machina

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Christine P. Newman // Studio and Ghost

Mike Hopkins // Light Painting 0

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Heather Schwartz // Bert Right // Kim

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RILEY SNELLING Portfolio

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Scrap Yards Scrap Yards documents objects that have been discarded and the value that can be found in them. This series combines landscape and portraiture to investigate both the environments and employees of scrap yards around the greater Toronto area. In these often overlooked places, scrap metal is broken down and recycled. This process transforms waste into worth. By engaging with these forgotten urban landscapes, we search for the beauty and value in towers of trash. Just as metal is extracted from scrap, these photographs extract the aesthetic qualities from compositions of junk. Curiosity drove me to explore these uncharted urban landscapes and the camera was a pretext to expose myself to part of an unfamiliar industry. Incorporating portraiture humanizes these industrial environments, serving as a reminder that these places are not abandoned. As Susan Sontag noted, “Our junk has become art.

Our junk has become history.�

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BEN FREEDMAN & AARON FRIEND LETTNER Essay & Portfolio Excerpts from a conversation between the artists on their work and their upcoming show at the Alliance Française Gallery.

The Pensive Spectator BF// It started when we decided to look at each other’s contact sheets. We didn’t know what we were going to do, but we wanted to feature these images. We sat and talked about photography and what photographs meant to us and why we were creating these particular kinds of images.

AFL// It was a process of discovering what was intriguing about the work, but also the possibilities of how to present it. Our first approach had a lot to do with coincidence and artistic similarity; how peculiar it was that these two bodies of work existed without knowledge of one another. This aspect though has disappeared from the main statement of the show.

BF// What’s remained is the different ways of looking and how we use the camera. When we discussed why we wanted to create a large-scale installation with thousands of photographs, it was because we wanted to overwhelm the viewer in way that’s similar to how we’re overwhelmed when we photograph. The camera is a tool that can isolate moments, similar to how viewers can isolate these photographs by removing them from the wall. The 16mm films are a new addition, which has changed the focus of the show to the expanded image.

AFL// It’s also about alternative ways to present work (something we’ve both been interested in since we worked on NOMADS), and different ways that people can interact with a photograph as a physical object. From the beginning, it was about recreating a selection process, but one that was appropriate to the experience of making the photographs in the world. I think even that sentence, making photographs in the world is something we’ve talked about a lot.

BF// We’ve also talked about the photographs as being diaristic.

AFL// Like jot notes or something.

BF// They’re very personal images, probably because we both carried around a camera for a long period of time and it became a reflex to use it. The first rolls I shot felt very self-conscious, but after a while, they became more and more intimate. I became less aware of the camera and so did the people around me.

AFL// When I first started taking pictures in Scotland, it was of landscapes or figures in landscapes and it was all quite distant…But almost every picture I made in the last few months was contained to my apartment: it’s the things that were most ritualistic, like my room or what I ate for breakfast. I don’t remember the first instant when I thought that those were important photographs to make, but somehow it made sense.

BF// Well, you were documenting. And you were away from home so it makes sense that a lot of your photographs were of landscapes and mine were portraits of our friends.

AFL// Almost all of my portraits are appropriated.

They’re faces on bus shelter ads or television screens. It was a time when I had no desire to photograph people. I was in a very solitary state of mind.

BF// Well, all those photographs are solitary. My work started out being very dark. It was the wintertime and I was always inside, hibernating, so I think there’s a sense of contemplation inherent to the images.

They’re very warm to me, even though they’ve been described by other people as being cold or introverted.

AFL// I think there’s a feeling of being unnoticed. Almost like a specter.

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BF// And there are these presumably unremarkable things that become remarkable because they’re photographed. You’re allowing them a second chance. I’m thinking of that picture of the avocados you took and how they look like dinosaur eggs. There’s something unique about them because of the way that they’re photographed.

AFL// And what is the way that they’re photographed?

If you break it down into aesthetics you can say it’s straight on and everything’s more or less in focus, but what is it that differentiates that picture of avocados from a picture of avocados on a cooking website?

BF// Well black and white definitely helps.

AFL// Right, so by that it puts it into a world that’s not...

BF// That’s a hard question to answer. Photographs are especially vulnerable to interpretation. People have the opportunity to expand upon photographs, which is why I think photography is so interesting; nothing is ever what it seems.

AFL// We have a lot of pictures of ordinary objects.

What makes a photograph of three avocados, that in many ways is unremarkable, special?

BF// It’s similar to other photos you’ve taken from this aerial, objective perspective. I think most of our photos are relatively objective. We’re intentionally trying to just show things the way that we’re seeing them. I also think that in both of our work, there’s a certain aesthetic that’s slightly removed. It’s not overly romantic, although there’s an inherent romanticization because of what we’re photographing—the moon, the mountains—but I think there’s a certain standoffish approach. There’s so much room in these photographs for interpretation and I think that’s why they’re powerful. They’re open, malleable images that people can invest meaning into. Looking at the 16mm films that we’ve been shooting—they still follow the same aesthetic decisions we were making when we created the photographs. The intention of the 16mm film was to expand the still frame; to show the line inbetween, the vibration between the still images and the films. But that’s been a whole other process, using the camera I mean. The main reason why we introduced the 16mm component was to make similar images with a motionpicture camera. It was a poetic reason: a year after the still images were created, we were making a new body of work involving movement. And what’s funny is that the closer the films got to the photographs, the better they became.

AFL// I remember in the first rolls we shot, we were us-

ing telephoto and wide lenses, which were then swapped for a normal lens, like what each of us used to make the still images. I think it’s because this is a more objective kind of gaze in photography, or one that comes closest to your actual eyesight with the least amount of distortion. There was that lecture we had with Bruce Elder about the camera as an improvement to the eye. I think about that in terms of a wide angle or telephoto lens permitting something you can’t experience in your own vision. Using a normal lens is the closest thing to eliminating the camera altogether; you’re not having to reverse or compare how you see through the camera to how you normally see. There’s less of an interference.

BF// The camera determines the outcome. When you’re shooting 16mm you need to be so still, whereas when you’re shooting 35mm, you can move around.

When you look at the two installations in the show, you’re comparing the cameras that were used to create these images, and the different ways of looking.

AFL// When we first introduced the idea of using film, it felt like a liberation; suddenly all these images were permitted to move. But now I think the still images have a greater sense of freedom, even in how we made them.

I remember having a thought that I would never hesitate from making a picture because it was going to be blurry. And you can see the effect of that. It’s different using a 16mm camera because it’s so tight, it requires such concentration, even on your breath. To hold your breath for twenty seconds, you become hyper-aware of your own body and you try not to breathe and then you become aware that you’re not breathing so you start to shake and then the camera starts shaking...

BF// ...and the camera reveals everything. When you look back on the film, you can see the breath, you can feel the presence of the person operating the camera. This could be problematic but instead it feels like a transparent way of image-making.

Through the mistakes, you become aware of the artist.

AFL// I think that’s what you were saying before about pictures that seem truthful and I know that’s a dangerous word to use, but I mean it in the way that they’re representative of the actual experience you had.

BF// You’re trying to limit the amount of fabrication. It’s a symbolic approach where even the mistakes are elevated.

We’re not trying to hide the mistakes and we’re not claiming to be taking technically perfect photographs, but when you see all the images, there’s a certain realness that comes from the mistakes. Without them it falls apart. I’m thinking of a photograph I took of the moon and when I got the film back there was just a white dot, there was no FN 115

definition in the film, but I still liked it because the camera had changed it. I like how the camera interrupts my memory. I don’t mind the mistakes because it’s real in the camera world; it’s the way the camera sees and affects the film.

AFL// That’s the thing about film as a material. When film holds an image it becomes undeniable; it happened in the world of the camera. I think what becomes apparent in the work is the presence of someone who is looking. In the still pictures you have the sense that a person was present and made the photograph, but you don’t have the same directness in your transition into that moment because it’s a flat surface and it doesn’t move, so you’re privy to something that you wouldn’t normally experience. But when you watch the films, because they’re moving you get these suggestions of breath or of a body holding the camera, which is much closer to the experience of being in somebody’s head looking out through their eyes, and so you have this sense of being there. You have two time states defined by movement: photographic prints that don’t move as images, but move as objects, and films that move as images but not as physical objects.

THE PENSIVE SPECTATOR

By Aaron Friend Lettner and Ben Freedman May 2nd - 31st. 2013 Opening Reception May 7th, 6:30 p.m. Alliance Française Gallery 24 Spadina Road, Toronto M5R 2S7 This cross-disciplinary exhibition features an expansive installation of more than 1,000 photographs created by collaborators Benjamin Freedman and Aaron Friend Lettner in Toronto and Edinburgh. Two side-by-side 16mm projections complement the photographic work. Evolving from a shared belief in the camera’s ability to heighten the experience of seeing into an engaged type of looking, the black and white images presented in The Pensive Spectator offer a diaristic account of the artists’ encounters in the world.

Viewers are invited to take photographs from the gallery wall as keepsakes and become participants by returning the photographs to the world in which they were created. The photographs, inherently motionless, become portable objects that can leave the gallery, while the films, which are always moving, remain anchored. The effect is a continual fluctuation of images that disappear and reappear throughout the length of the exhibition.

This exhibition is the result of an award program presented in partnership with Ryerson University, Alliance Française, and the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. The Pensive Spectator was selected by a jury from proposals by third- and fourth-year Ryerson University Image Arts students. Freedman and Friend Lettner were subsequently mentored by the CONTACT Festival’s artistic project manager, Sabrina Maltese.

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IMAGE LIST BEN FREEDMAN 1. Wrist, 2012 3. Coffee, 2012 4. Mug, 2012 5. Bonfire, 2012 7. Hair Pull, 2012 10. Ghost, 2012 AARON FRIEND LETTNER 2. Avocados, 2012 6. Kitchen Drawers, 2012 8. Man of Storr, 2012 9.Vertigo, 2012 11. Mountain, 2012

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Danielle Campbell // The First 53 Days with You

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Jackson Klie // Index, Fig.389 and pg. 144 Right: Untitled #2

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Attachments 0174_001_034_5 // Originality and the Avant Garde

ANNIE MACDONELL

0189_004_067_1 // Past_Future

Interview

Interview by // Christian Arab Annie MacDonell is a Toronto-based visual artist who exhibits and screens her work across Canada and internationally. MacDonell is an alumnus of Ryerson University and in 2012, she was long-listed for the Sobey Art Award and short-listed for the Grange Prize. Currently, she teaches in the photography program at Ryerson University and her work is represented by Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art. The purpose of partially producing discussion over the Internet, as we have agreed upon in “real life,” I believe does not simply imply that this particular interview method is “informal,” “easy,” and “quick.” Rather, alternation of information, within the set of two (seemingly different) contexts may work towards describing critical concepts found throughout your practice.

FN // The physical nature of your installation work arrests concepts of originality within art and art practice—most recently, the artist’s studio. This image describes the structure of a camera obscura built to the dimensions of your own personal studio space, exhibited in Mercer Union last year as part of Originality and the Avant Garde (On Art and Repetition).

My question to you is directed towards the experience of the “double” and the context it is represented in.

Through the act of mimicry, viewers are allowed access to an experience of dimensional space originating elsewhere. What are your thoughts about the nature of describing one context, acknowledged as (an) “original,” into another (in this case a white box)?

AM // The 9’ x 14’ mirrored structure at the centre of the Mercer installation generated a series of related doublings. First, and most apparently, its outer mirror surface doubled the bright white exhibition space in its totality, as well as the suite of five photographs hanging on the gallery wall. Also, the interior of the structure performed a double function: it alternated between being a projection space (for the film “Originality and Repetition,” 2012) and a functional camera obscura. There was a lens embedded in the front wall of the structure, which reproduced the suite of images on the gallery wall. Lastly, the box was a stand-in (or double) for my studio space, where all the work in the show was conceived and produced.

AM // I can’t say I’ve ever thought about “distance” as a creative or conceptual strategy. Can you explain what you mean by that?

FN // In a sense, I think the distance I am interested in can be considered both as physical and metaphysical. I am interested in the multiple planes of representation and the collapse of space between viewer and subject. I guess, perhaps, I might be reading something into the images and their “re”-renditions.

I did a project early in third year that was about such collapse: using the image within the image, I discussed the relation that went as follows: lens-subject, lens-object, and viewer-object.

AM // I think the way you’re thinking of “distance” might be similar to the way I think about framing. With photography and film, we’re generally not creating new images, but instead working from the existing pool of images that reality offers up to us. The essential act then becomes one of framing those existing images in order to designate them for a special kind of attention. We get the viewer to look at them with an intent and intensity we don’t normally bring to the act of seeing. For me, presenting an image within an image is multiplying the framework around the image in order to bring attention not to the subject of the photograph, but instead to the act of looking at a photograph.

One of the goals of the piece as a whole was to create a work without a concrete point of origin. Recreating my studio space within the exhibition space was an attempt at conflating the place of art production with the location of its display. This was done not in order to foreground or romanticize the moment of the work’s origin, but rather to acknowledge the particular type of production (or post-production) work that happens when you work with existing images.

FN // Within the same installation, the viewer suffers a meditative distance between images on a variety of levels. Not unlike the emulation of your studio space, these images/objects themselves can be perceived as planes of representation in a bigger construction pointing to no “concrete” origin. As you have mentioned, the intent of this is to acknowledge and bring forth a mode of production and experience of viewing. How does distance within your productions function?

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Image by // Christian Arab

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Attachment 0174_001_034_6 // Originality and the Avant Garde

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Attachment 0174_001_034_7 // Originality and the Avant Garde

FN // Prior to your shortlist nomination for the Grange Prize last year as part of the Images Festival, you exhibited The Fortune Teller in the Young Gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). Part of the exhibition was a video of a 16mm film, titled The Shape of Time, Reconsidered, documenting the actions of an art conservator within the conservation lab at the AGO, looking at the conservation of an early-twentieth-century resin hand from an animatronic fortune-telling machine. Where did your interest in the institution within your artwork arise from?

AM // I am not specifically interested in the art institution or institutional critique. What led me to work with the AGO conservation studio was the desire to film the process of refurbishing that particular object.

The fortune teller’s hand, which was broken and stained when I found it, seemed to be the perfect allegory for the relationship between art, history, and dispersion of ideas through time.

But I was also interested in the space of the conservation studio itself. After spending time thinking about the studio for my previous project, I was very interested in this other place, one where works are not produced, but instead, a place where they go for upkeep, for repair and maintenance. Beyond that, it’s just a really beautiful space—high ceilings, lots of natural light, and wide open rooms filled with a jumble of art and arti-

facts from all over the world and all different eras. To my eyes, it seemed like some kind of happy purgatory or temporary resting place. In terms of history and the dissemination of ideas, which was my area of inquiry, it was the perfect setting.

FN // How does time factor in your praxis of working across different mediums?

AM // What attracted me to both photo and film in the first place was the potential to manipulate time through the medium of images. My long-standing fascination with repetition and slowness, for instance, is based in the way these strategies can make time itself manifest. This is why I love experimental film. As soon as you step away from narrative, you can begin to manipulate time as if it is almost a plastic thing, something you can bend and extend, dilate and contract in all directions.

In my recent work I’ve been trying to apply the formal strategies of repetition and circularity in order to make work that’s about the relationship between the past, present, and future. For instance with The Shape of Time, Reconsidered, the structure of the film is perfectly circular, and the film itself is about how the old and the new are always engaged in a dialectic relationship.

AM // I’m working on a series of images produced on my flatbed scanner, which are simple assemblages of everyday objects, made strange through the flattening and distortion of the scanner. They’ll be published as a portfolio in the next edition of C Photo International, guest edited by Charlotte Cotton. I am also re-working The Fortune Teller film. I have a version that I’ve been showing as an installation piece, but my goal from the outset was to produce a film for cinema, so I’m working towards that. The new version will be in a show called Dark Stars, at the Cleveland MOCA in May. Also, I’m getting ready for an artist’s residency in London in the spring, where, instead of making things, I plan to watch lots of British experimental films and see as much as art as possible. And eat lots of fish and chips.

FN // What are you currently working on?

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RYERSON IMAGE CENTRE A Guide for Students: The RIC and its Collections, Gallery, and Research By // Samantha Spatari Supervised by // Thierry Gervais If you are a student or recent alumnus of Ryerson University, you have probably witnessed (or suffered from) the renovations to the School of Image Arts building, as well as the addition of the new Ryerson Image Centre (RIC). Since its official unveiling in September 2012, the RIC has been open to students, alumni, faculty, and the general public, and is a learning environment that caters to those interested in research or in volunteering their time in a gallery setting. The Centre is run by ten talented individuals who hope to enlighten Image Arts students about the opportunities available to them at Ryerson. From 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, the Research Centre at the RIC provides a quiet research and work space. The double doors at the entrance of the RIC might appear intimidating, but they act as an airlock, maintaining a stable environment for the photographic collections. This newly built storage facility puts the Ryerson Image Centre on par with other Ontario art institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, in terms of its art-preservation technology. The RIC’s collections, gallery, and research resources offer great advantages to both undergraduate and graduate Image Arts students who seek to enhance their own artistic study.

The Film and Photography Resource Centre was established after 1968 when a group of photographic objects and prints were acquired to establish a teaching collection. Subsequently enriched by the generosity of Mira Godard, the facility was renamed The Mira Godard Study Centre in 1995. Nowadays, The Photographs Collection of historical prints contains approximately 3,000 objects and offers rare glimpses into photography’s earliest history. By appointment, students are able to view the objects in the RIC and analyze historic printing methods; among the print processes represented in the collection are gelatin silver, chromogenic, platinum, albumen, and a small number of nineteenth-century examples such as

daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes. Reproductions do not compare to original photographic objects— the quality of the materials used, the texture, tonal range, and information on the prints’ versos cannot be fully experienced in a reproduction. In 2005, The Photographs Collection was further enhanced by the acquisition of the famous Black Star Collection, containing 292,000 journalistic photographs that capture many of the major events of the twentieth-century Western world. The acquisition of the Black Star Collection from an anonymous donor initiated a plan to construct a new facility; this benefactor also provided a base funding of seven million dollars, a sum necessary to house and properly preserve the photographs in what was to become the RIC. The collection originated in 1935 after three Jewish men fled the Nazi regime in Germany and came to New York, establishing the Black Star photographic agency.

The photographs found in the collection span from 1910 to1992, and include photographers such as W. Eugene Smith, Robert Capa, Charles Moore, Jim Pickerell, and Flip Schulke, whose images were used in such magazines as LIFE and Look. Today, the collection is safely stored alongside the RIC’s Photographs Collection on the second floor of the School of Image Arts building, inside the museum-standard vault. The vault is temperature controlled, and should the collection continue to grow, the vault can expand to accommodate further acquisitions.

The RIC has also set up a computer database using MIMSY software to keep track of the materials available at the RIC, and to make sorting through the collections’ extensive content quick and easy. At present, the database stores records of all of the photographs available at the RIC, and is constantly being updated with digitized images of the historical Photographs Collection and the Black Star Collection. The goal is to have the first 3,000 objects scanned and ready by this summer, and the 292,000

Jeffrey Carlson // The Vault

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prints of the Black Star Collection fully digitized within the next decade. Students also have access to rare first edition books and article files which have been collected for over 40 years; most of these files cannot be found online and are therefore only accessible at the RIC. Although the RIC seems geared towards photographers, there are opportunities for filmmakers as well. Film scripts and recordings of the one hundred and eighty Lecture Series dating back to 1975 (with its first guest speaker, W. Eugene Smith) can be borrowed by students from the Research Centre.

In addition to the collections, the RIC has three gallery spaces located on the first floor of the School of Image Arts building: the Main Gallery, the University Gallery, and the Student Gallery. These spaces are also accompanied by the Salah J. Bachir Media Wall, which can be

seen from outside the west façade of the building. In September 2012, the RIC opened with the exhibition Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection.

The exhibition, curated by the RIC’s director Doina Popescu and Peggy Gale, featured contemporary Canadian artists Stephen Andrews, Christina Battle, Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Stan Douglas, Vera Frenkel, Vid Ingelevics, David Rokeby, and Michael Snow, who were commissioned to create work in response to the Black Star Collection. Presented alongside Archival Dialogues was The Art of the Archive, an exhibition curated by Gaëlle Morel and featuring work by current Ryerson students and recent alumni. Students thus had the opportunity to exhibit with renowned artists, while demonstrating the range of talent at the School of Image Arts; the exhibition contained not only photographs, but video and installation pieces as well.

Following Archival Dialogues, the new year brought Human Rights, Human Wrongs, in which guest curator Mark Sealy overwhelmed viewers with compelling human and civil rights photographs selected from the Black Star Collection. Accompanying this was Alfredo Jaar’s We Wish to Inform You That We Didn’t Know and Clive Holden’s Un-American (Un-Famous), both curated by Gaëlle Morel. Exhibited in the Student Gallery was another alumnus, Dominic Nahr, whose exhibition Captive State, curated by Natalie MacNamara, enthralled its viewers. Dominic Nahr is a recent graduate of the School of Images Arts’ photography program and is featured in an interview in this issue of Function Magazine. For students looking to exhibit their work, the RIC has a yearly open call for exhibition applications for the Student Gallery. Current students and alumni who have graduated within the past five years are eligible to apply. Recent graduate and former Function Magazine creative director Gemma Warren recently exhibited her photographic series Year Zero. A Prison With No Walls. This was a great post-graduation opportunity for Gemma to have her first major solo show in a professional setting, monitored by a curator and exhibited at the same level as established artists.

Samantha Spatari // Student Gallery

The application process can be found on the RIC’s website (http://www.ryerson.ca/ric/) under the heading Student Information. Submissions must include work that is created using lens-based media, but is not limited to photography; previous student exhibitions have included a wide variety of work, ranging from photography to video to installation art. For students seeking an internship position, the website includes applications for the RIC’s Summer Research Workshop.

Jeffrey Carlson // Second Floor Study Area

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Students can also contact RIC staff members by e-mail for information regarding volunteer opportunities in the gallery.

According to Doina Popescu, the RIC is committed to primary research as a way of making its collections “live,” thereby offering another opportunity for students to not only aid in the preservation of the collections but to study them as well. The first student research workshops examined the publication of Black Star photographs in LIFE, Look, and Time, and produced statistics that bridge the gaps between the original images and their reproductions. As a result of these workshops, the RIC is developing a web publishing program to make this primary research available for use in research papers and essays. The RIC also regularly organizes scholarly symposia, including About Photographic Collections: Definitions, Descriptions, Access (January, 2012,) and, more recently, Pictures of By Indians (February, 2013). The much-anticipated The “Public Life” of Photographs symposium (May 9-11, 2013) will bring together fifteen internationally renowned scholars and curators to discuss the dissemination of photographic images from the nineteenth century to the present, and illustrates the scope of the RIC’s achievements and international prestige.

Furthermore, starting in September, 2013, the RIC will announce the launch of two one-month fellowships, one spot granted to an international or local scholar, and the other designated for a student. The application process begins in October, 2013, and for students pursuing post-graduate and PhD studies, this might be an opportunity to consider.

The RIC is a vital component of the School of Image Arts, bringing together its collections, galleries, and research in ways that make it easy for students to engage in areas that suit their field of artistic practice. The RIC not only brings prestige to the school, it provides opportunities to get in touch with professional artists, curators, and scholars who are willing to share their knowledge and further students’ learning experience. This issue of Function Magazine could not have been possible without the help of Thierry Gervais, Doina Popescu, Gaëlle Morel, Peter Higdon, Chantal Wilson, Clare Samuel, and Christina Papantoniou, all of whom are involved with the RIC and devote their time to assist in student initiatives. The combination of the School of Image Arts and the RIC creates incredible exposure, further illustrating the benefits that both students and alumni can reap from the programs here at Ryerson University.

Images supplied by the RIC // Symposium

Left: Jeffrey Carlson // Exterior

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FN ONLINE Claudia Puchiele // Beauty Part III - 01:17 Beauty Part III is a visual response to a classmate’s written interpretation of a “beautiful” and sensory experience. Out of the entire piece, two single sentences resonated with me, bringing me back to the many camping trips I went on with my family while growing up: “Here I was, alone, yet entirely surrounded with life. Just the ancient trees, plants, fire, and little critters every now and then, and I knew I was keeping good company.” The video is made up of scans of all the photographs taken while on those camping trips. They have been cropped and enlarged, showing only small, somewhat blurred fragments of each photograph. This, along with the brief amount of time that each image is shown, is meant to mirror the fleeting nature of memory.

Michael Winston Smith // Genuine Articles & Authentic Attempts (Best so Far) - 02:50 This portfolio canonizes and celebrates the derivative representation. Each work is a pastiche of institutional refinement and theoretical atonement; the artist as commodity. Having spent the last four years worshipping at the altar of Fine Art, Genuine Articles & Authentic Attempts is an aneurism of symbolism, it is overflowing and drowning simultaneously. I am critical of what I love most.

If I’ve done anything properly, this work should be intentionally suggestive. It should have hints of Kruger and Lawler, Debord and Baudrillard; thoughts and ideas about quality, originality, genuineness, and authenticity; unwavering political potency wrapped in a bow of sophisticated cynicism and spritzed with the redolence of accelerationism.

Maria Clara Casasfranco // Ever-Changing Faces: a glimpse of autism - Installation Ever-Changing Faces: a glimpse of autism is an installation that aims to challenge the ability of individuals who do not have social deficits to read facial expressions. Through the use of portraiture and sound, this project attempts to represent the obstacles and barriers that are faced by individuals with autism and their families. From clinical images to voices full of emotion, the installation tries to submerge the viewer in the roles of people who face and live with autism every day.

Jessica Porretta and Samantha Spatari // Back to Basics - Installation Jessica Porretta and Samantha Spatari have been inspired to create their final thesis project based on their history of dance. The piece entitled Back to Basics reflects on the early stages of the motion picture industry, when the Kinetoscope brought people into the space of the first moving images. The two wanted to find a way to express what they feel when they dance, and through their own choreography, be able to find a solution to their struggle with how to capture dance through a lensbased medium. A manipulation of the dancers’ shadows allows the viewer to not only experience a level of surprise, but to understand what goes on in the mind of a dancer while performing their rigorous routines.

Connor Crawford // Extremely Local Weather Simulator - Installation Extremely Local Weather Simulator is installed in two modes. The first captures a pseudo “wind speed” and using local XBee radios, it transmits this wind data. A second device, which is placed directly beside it, receives the data via radio. The data is interpreted as four different possible speeds, which are displayed on an LCD screen, also triggering the spinning of a small fan at four different speeds.

This is a network of the banal-ephemeral, and the hyper-obvious. The developing internet has made our everyday actions have global consequences. Extremely Local Weather Simulator looks at a network on a surreal micro-cosmic level, boasting its scaled down connectivity.

Zaid Edghaim Here Here - Installation Here Here consists of three appropriations from Duchamp that mechanically produce sounds. By raiding the visual vocabulary of Duchamp—to raise the Cageian question of where the boundary between sound and music lies—I ask the viewer to recognize these seemingly disparate, everyday sounds as a sonorous sculpture and as sound art. I ask the audience to appreciate the musicality of the sounds that surround us daily by presenting them through these readymades. My goal is for the viewers to realize that “noise” is actually the music of the everyday—the soundtrack of life.

Callan Field // Waves II - 02:17 Waves II is an experimental video about sound. Created using Pure Data (an audio programming language), the video explores the relationship between sound, mathematics, and visual representation. Using code, various waveforms such as the sine, tan, and sawtooth wave are created and mixed in order to disrupt the visual-auditory relationship unique to each wave type. As the piece progresses, the visual component degrades and becomes incomprehensible. Yet where our eyes fail, the ears do not, as they are able to pick out and identify various oscillations.

Parker Kay // The Digital and Physical Body – 3:00 The exercise of this video portrait is to acknowledge the division of the self and to confront the tension that is created between the physical and digital body.

Marshall McLuhan states that a common error of man is using new technologies the way that the previous technology was used. By juxtaposing the two representations of the body, their differences are forefronted. On the left, a stream of co‐ordinates (x, y, and z axis) maps the position of the body by way of an accelerometer and Arduino microcontroller mounted onto the physical body.

On the right, a video portrait of the physical body, caught in the gaze of the database that continues to grow in front of them. Both of these representations of the self acknowledge each other while existing in entirely different forms.

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THANKS! Volunteers// Callan Field Michael Flannery Khristel Stecher Social Media// Ben Freedman, Mitchell Gosse, Shannon Rolanty, Michael Winston Smith Function Promo Video// Jeffrey Carlson, Karen Labis, Neil Silverman Maximum Exposure// Cassandra Alexander, Shannon DeVeber, Kirsti Langen, Christine P. Newman Sponsors// PFACS FCAD RSU Ryerson University Donations// Toronto Image Works Mill Street Brewery Henry’s Canada Rob Ricciutelli at Rob’s No Frills Gianluca Iacobellis From GMI Property Maintenance Troy Zaban at RP Graphics Scenework Consulting Inc. Tina Colavecchia at Costa Printing Adidas Canada Special Thanks// Thierry Gervais (faculty advisor), Gerd Hauck (dean of the Faculty of Communication & Design), Doina Popescu, Gaëlle Morel, Daniel Garcia, James McCrorie, Cathy Gullo, Bob Burley, Don Snyder, Vid Ingelevics, Blake Fitzpatrick, Sara Angelucci, Peter Higdon, Chantal Wilson, Natalie MacNamara, Shirley Lewchuk, Ruth Kaplan, Christina Papantoniou, Clare Samuel, David Green, Janice Carbert, Molly Kalkstein, Fred Payne, Annya Karina Marttinen, Josie Spatari, Domenic Spatari, Ronald Foley, Karen Moore, IMA Gallery, Student Lecture Series

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INDEX Mary Anderson 3rd Year Photography mary1.anderson@ryerson.ca

Mitchell Gosse 4th Year Photography www.mitchellgosse.com

Mark Peckmezian Student Alumni www.markpeckmezian.com

Danielle Campbell 4th Year Photography www.daniellesuzanne.com

Mike Hopkins 3rd Year Photography mike.hopkins.01@gmail.com

John-Charles (JC) Pinheiro 3rd Year Photography pinheirojc@gmail.com

Jeffrey Carlson 4th Year Photography www.jrkcarlson.com

Alaric Johnson 4th Year Photography www.i-m.co/alaricjohnson/photography

Jessica Porretta 4th Year New Media www.jessicaporretta.com

Maria Clara Casasfranco 4th Year Photography www.mariaclara.ca

Parker Kay 3rd Year New Media www.parkerkay.com

Kyra Power 4th Year Photography www.kyrapowerphotography.com

Connor Crawford 3rd Year New Media www.connorcrawford.com

Jackson Klie 4th Year Photography jklie@ryerson.ca

Claudia Puchiele 4th Year Photography www.claudiapuchielephotography.4ormat.com

Liam Coo 4th Year Photography www.liamcoo.com

Karen Labis 4th Year Photography www.cargocollective.com/karenlabis

Shannon Rolanty 4th Year Photography www.shannonrolanty.com

Rebekah Dueck 4th Year Photography www.rebekahdueck.com

Gerald Larocque 4th Year Photography www.geraldlarocque.com

Heather Schwartz 4th Year Photography www.hschwartzphoto.wordpress.com

Zaid Edghaim 4th Year New Media zaid.edghaim@gmail.com

Summer Leigh 4th Year Photography www.summerleigh.4ormat.com

Michael Winston Smith 4th Year Photography www.mwsmithart.com

Leila Syed-Fatemi 3rd Year Photography leilafatemi110@gmail.com

Aaron Friend Lettner 4th Year Photography www.aaron-friendlettner.com

Riley Snelling 4th Year Photography www.rileysnellingphoto.com

Callen Field 3rd Year Photography www.callen.field.com

Annie MacDonell Ryerson Faculty www.anniemacdonell.ca

Samantha Spatari 4th Year Photography www.samanthaspatari.com

Meaghan Foley 4th Year Photography meaghan.foley@ryerson.ca

Byron A. Martin Student Alumni www.byronmartin.com

Sarah Virag 3rd Year Photography www.sarahvirag.com

Ben Freedman 4th Year Photography www.benfreedmanphotography.ca

Dylan McArthur 1st Year Photography Mcarthur.dylan@gmail.com

Ryan Walker 2nd Year Documentary Media www.ryanwalkerphoto.ca

Justin Friesen 4th Year Film www.justinfriesen.com

Dominic Nahr Student Alumni www.dominicnahr.com

A.J. Watson 3rd Year Photography Ajwatson1952@gmail.com

Nicole Glassman 4th Year New Media nicole.glassman.5@gmail.com

Christine P. Newman 4th Year Photography christinepnewman@gmail.com

Alice Zilberberg Student Alumni www.alicezilberberg.com

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INTERVIEWS Mark Peckmezian Annie MacDonell Byron A. Martin Dominic Nahr Alice Zilberberg PORTFOLIOS Mary Anderson Jeffrey Carlson Liam Coo Ben Freedman Aaron Friend Lettner Mitchell Gosse JC Pinheiro Shannon Rolanty Riley Snelling Ryan Walker