News & Events

Ryerson is taking a starring role in this year’s Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

The world-class exhibits that launched last week are some of the highlights of Ryerson’s involvement in the 2013 festival. On May 8 the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) will launch Black Star at 6 p.m. The 32-page catalogue is a companion to the “Lead and Light: The Evolution of Lumiere Press” exhibition, currently on display in the student gallery until June 2. The exhibition, drawn from public collections and the press’s archives, was researched, curated, designed and mounted by 10 second-year students in Ryerson’s Photographic Preservation and Collections Management master’s program, under the direction of Professor David Harris. Lead and Light explores 27 years of hand-printed, hand-bound photography books published by Toronto’s Lumiere Press.

Lumiere Press’s 22nd limited-edition handmade publication, Black Star, is edited and designed by publisher and photographic arts ’73 alumnus Michael Torosian. The Black Star Collection of approximately 292,000 black and white photojournalistic prints, documents the 20th century with particularly strong representation from the period referred to as the “golden age of photojournalism,” the era before the widespread presence of television eclipsed the published photo-essay. Lumiere Press is devoted exclusively to photography. Each limited-edition publication is individually conceived, extensively researched, designed and impeccably produced. In the fine press tradition, the books are composed in lead, hand printed and hand bound.

The book launch precedes a two-day symposium – “The Public Life of Photographs” – May 9 to 11 at the Rogers Communications Centre. Experts in the history of photography, art history, philosophy and visual culture will gather to analyze and discuss the dissemination of photographic images from the 19th century to the present. The symposium will cover four areas: photography in public narratives; market and exhibitions of photography; photographs in print; and public photographs in art. For complete details about the program, please visit www.ryerson.ca/ric/lectures/Publiclife.html.

In addition to the must-see shows at the Ryerson Image Centre, students, faculty and staff have made their mark as artists and exhibitors at CONTACT. Of the 17 Ryersonians participating in the festival, Canadian Art magazine highlighted alumni Jackson Klie and Michelle O’Byne, Robyn Cumming, Mark Peckmezian and student Dan Epstein as four shows they want to see at CONTACT this year.

The Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival features more than 1,500 artists, increasing exposure and recognition for local, Canadian and international photographers. This year’s theme is field of vision, which reveals photography as a visual paradigm that structures how scenes, places and events are seen.

For full festival details, visit http://scotiabankcontactphoto.com/.