PAST LECTURES & EVENTS

The Disappearance of Darkness: Photography at the End of the Analog Era - Book Launch
Stephen Bulger Gallery, 1026 Queen Street West
December 5, 2012
5:00-8:00pm

Opening Remarks by Doina Popescu, Director of the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC). A public conversation between Robert Burley and Dr. Gaëlle Morel, Exhibitions Curator at the RIC will begin at 6:00pm. This will be the first opportunity for Robert Burley to sign copies of his book in Toronto. The exhibition Robert Burley: The Disappearance of Darkness organized by the Ryerson Image Centre and curated by Dr. Morel will be on display at the RIC, January 22 to April 13, 2014. This book is co-published with Princeton Architectural Press.



 

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Panel Discussion

Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection 

Saturday, November 10 @ 1pm

Peggy Gale, co-curator of Archival Dialogues
Dot Tuer, writer, cultural theorist, historian, and professor at OCADU
Jennifer Allen, art critic and editor of Frieze d/e


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Noon Time Collection Talks

A Collection Comes Full Circle: Mark Wolfson’s Gift to the RIC
September 19, 2013 @ 12pm

Peter Higdon, Collections Curator, will speak about Toronto collector Mark Wolfson’s important 2010 gift of thirty-two photographs to the RIC. The donation includes works by Peter Henry Emerson, Edward Muybridge, W. Eugene Smith and Jacques-Henri Lartigue, as well as rare panoramic prints by H. O. Dodge that document the celebrative pageantry that took place during Quebec City’s Tercentenary in 1908. Peter will show and discuss a selection of prints from the donation. Mark Wolfson will be present for questions and commentary on his collecting practice. Please join us for this introduction to an important addition to the holdings.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013 @ 12pm - Ruth Kaplan: Bathers

Beginning in 1991, Bathers is a series of work that Toronto-based photographer, Ruth Kaplan, pursued for more than a decade. It is a seminal body of work in Kaplan’s practice and the Ryerson Image Centre is proud that it is well represented in the collection. In exploring the universality and cultural variety of the human connection to water, Bathers takes the viewer through contexts as varied as California’s Esalen, a centre of spiritual seeking, to the Czech Republic and other Eastern European settings where water is used as medical treatment. Later works include public baths in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains and hot springs in Iceland. Kaplan will also speak about her current projects.

Ruth Kaplan’s work is held by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the CMCP, the Canada Council Art Bank and numerous private collections. She is represented by the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto.

Thursday, March 21, 2013 @ 12pm - Phil Bergerson: “Shards of America,” and Beyond
Phil Bergerson is a photographer whose fascination with the ironic detritus of North American culture is longstanding. His remarkable book, Shards of America, is a rich and tumbling index of cultural expression as seen in the architecture, the streets and the signage – commercial, anarchic, eccentric and imploring – of small towns across the continent. The Ryerson Image Centre has been the fortunate recipient of a range of prints from the project, and is pleased to announce a talk by the artist on this work. He will speak as well about its continuation and the development of a second book.

Phil Bergerson’s work is held by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the CMCP and the National Gallery of Canada. He is represented by the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto.

Thursday, February 14, 2013 @ 12pm - Photographic Expeditions in the 19^th Century
Steven Evans, photographer, collector and specialist in 19^th century photography has emerged as an important player internationally on the collecting scene and in the photography marketplace. His holdings include works by many significant figures in 19^th and early 20^th century photography, and he has discovered and brought long lost practitioners back into the light. Steven is the generous donor of a range of 19^th century albumen prints to the RIC Collection by figures important in the history of photography. Using these original prints he will speak about their place in the revolution in visual culture delivered by photography in the decades after the announcement of its invention in 1839.

Thursday, January 17, 2013 @ 12pm: Wendy MacNeil: Pictures and Portraits
The Ryerson Image Centre has acquired the archive of the celebrated New England-based photographer Wendy MacNeil, whose introduction of vernacular photography into her fine art practice in the early 1970s was groundbreaking. It was an era of experimentation, and resuscitation of early photographic processes, and MacNeil chose the exquisite platinum-palladium on vellum as her primary medium. Her portraits are exploratory, deeply engaging, and ask the perpetual question: is it possible to genuinely portray another?Don Snyder, photographer, critical writer and professor in the School of Image Arts, is an expert on the work of Wendy MacNeil. He will show a range of her original preparatory and final prints and discuss her impact on photography at a time when a number of significant women photographers emerged in the field.

Thursday, September 20, 2012 @ 12pm: Landing the Black Star Collection

Peter Higdon, Ryerson Image Centre Collections Curator

Thursday, October 18, 2012 @ 12pm: The Black Star Agency and Life Magazine

Dr. Thierry Gervais, Assistant Professor, Ryerson University School of Image Arts, and Ryerson Image Centre Head of Research

Thursday, November 22, 2012 @ 12pm: Berenice Abbott: Paris and New York

Dr. Gaëlle Morel, Ryerson Image Centre Exhibitions Curator

Saturday, November 24, 2012 @ 2pm

Doina Popescu and Peggy Gale, co-curators of Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection
 artists from the exhibition will be in attendance


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Berenice Abbott: Photographs – Conference
Ryerson University, Rogers Communication Centre,
80 Gould Street, Eaton Theatre, RCC-204 (Second Floor)
Saturday, May 26, 2012  1:00-4:30pm

To accompany the exhibition Berenice Abbott: Photographs the Ryerson Image Centre and Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival are pleased to present a one-day conference addressing the work of Berenice Abbott. This conference will be open to the public and free to attend.

1:00pm Introductions
Doina Popescu, Director of the Ryerson Image Centre,
Marta Gili, Director of the Jeu de Paume (Paris),
Bonnie Rubenstein, Artistic Director, Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

1:30pm Keynote Address
Ron Kurtz, Owner of Commerce Graphics
A graduate of MIT, Kurtz had a long career in the high tech materials industry as owner of Kulite Tungsten Corp.  In 1961, a lifelong interest in photography led him to begin collecting fine art photographs. In 1985, he acquired the Berenice Abbott archive.  After donating a large portion of the archive to various museums and institutions, he established Commerce Graphics to administer the commercial aspects of Abbott’s work.  Since the sale of Kulite in 1997, Kurtz is involved full time with Commerce Graphics.

2:45pm Panel Discussion
Gaëlle Morel, Sarah Miller, Terri Weissman, Moderator: Sophie Hackett

Gaëlle Morel is Curator at the Ryerson Image Centre. She received her PhD in the history of contemporary art from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, and she is a member of the editorial committee of the bilingual refereed journal Études photographiques. Morel was the guest curator of the Mois de la Photo in Montreal in 2009 and she has written essays that have appeared in a number of books and catalogues.

Sarah Miller is the Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Scholar in American Art at the University of Chicago. She is writing a book on the diverse inventions and iterations of the concept “documentary” across theories, practices, and institutions of photography during the American 1930s. Her work has been supported by the Whiting Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, Center for Creative Photography, Council on Library and Information Resources, and University of Chicago.

Terri Weissman is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her book, The Realisms of Berenice Abbott: Documentary Photography and Political Action, was published by the University of California Press in 2011. She also co-curated (with Sharon Corwin and Jessica May) the exhibition American Modern: Abbott, Evans and Bourke-White. Her current project investigates the visual culture of protest movements; it is tentatively titled, This is What Democracy Looks Like: Freedom, Action and Revolutionary Dreams.

Moderator:
Sophie Hackett is the Assistant Curator, Photography at the Art Gallery of Ontario and adjunct faculty in Ryerson University’s Masters program in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management. Over the last decade, she has contributed to several Canadian art magazines and international journals and curated many shows independently. Recently, in her role at the Art Gallery of Ontario, she commissioned Barbara Kruger to create a new work for the front façade of the AGO, Untitled (It), for the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.


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Berenice Abbott: Photographs – Opening reception
Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO)
May 23, 2012
6:00-8:30pm

Opening remarks:
Sheldon Levy (Ryerson University), Doina Popescu (Ryerson Image Centre), Marta Gili (Jeu de Paume), Darcy Killeen or Bonnie Rubenstein (Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival).

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Berenice Abbott: Photographs – Catalogue launch
Stephen Bulger Gallery, 1026 Queen Street West
May 22, 2012
5:00-7:00pm

Opening Remarks by Doina Popescu, Director of the Ryerson Image Centre and Marta Gigi, Director of the Jeu de Paume Interview of Gaëlle Morel, curator of Berenice Abbott: Photographs exhibition and the Ryerson Image Centre conducted by Professor Blake Fitzpatrick, Graduate Program Director, Documentary Media (MFA) Program, School of Image Arts, at Ryerson University.

Dr. Morel will speak to Prof. Fitzpatrick about the art and practice of seminal American photographer Berenice Abbott. She will share insights into Abbott’s work and illuminate her own curatorial practice.

This will be the first opportunity for Dr. Morel to sign copies of her book on Berenice Abbott in Toronto.

Co-Organized with This Is Not A Reading Series (TINARS).




Co-Presented with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and the Stephen Bulger Gallery.




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Close Encounters – Catalogue launch
The Gladstone Hotel, Main Ballroom, 1214 Queen Street West
April 16, 2012
Doors open at 7:00pm

Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years
The Toronto Celebration and Catalogue Launch

What will happen to Indigenous culture tomorrow? Through the cultural practices of today, we can begin to formulate what the future will bring. Join us for a lively evening of art, storytelling, performance and film.

Featuring:

• the art of Kent Monkman,
• the storytelling of Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair
• the films of Rebecca Belmore, Maria Thereza Alves and Tracy Moffat
• a Manifesto performance by Steve Loft
• and the curatorial presence of Lee-Ann Martin, Steve Loft and Candice Hopkins

Steve Loft is the National Visiting Trudeau Fellow at Ryerson University and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Ryerson Image Centre

Co-Organized with This Is Not A Reading Series (TINARS).

Co-Presented with the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art and the Trudeau Foundation.



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Toronto Convention. ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTIONS: Definitions, Descriptions, Access.
January 19- January 21, 2012
Ryerson University



Photographic collections and photographic objects are questioning and challenging curators, collectors and photographic dealers in their daily work.

Art historians have long been faced with having to identify the hand of the master painter or sculptor among those of his/her students; in the same regard, photographic historians are now working with portraits from Nadar’s studio and images by Man Ray printed long after his death. This issue of authorship raises the question of object/image-dating: How does one write a proper caption?

Photography questions the idea of the original, which is very important to the process of collecting: Should one collect negatives or prints? Which prints should be collected?

In the last two decades, questions related to this multifaceted aspect of the photographic object have generated extensive research about the appropriate vocabulary used to describe photographs: a vocabulary that would evade photographic ubiquities and which would facilitate knowledge exchanges; a vocabulary that would precisely describe photographic objects and would aid curators and collectors with their collections; a vocabulary that would better facilitate access to the general public, not only to the image but also to the picture – the original print.

The ‘Toronto Convention: About Photographic Collections, Definitions, Descriptions and Access’ aims to share this research, to engage in new discussions and to contribute to the establishment of a precise photographic vocabulary. Curators, collectors, conservators, photographic dealers and scholars will present lectures and will take part in panel discussions from Thursday, January 19th, 2012 to Saturday, January 21st, 2012.  A publication gathering important definitions is planned as a follow-up to the symposium.

The full program can be downloaded here.

Watch the symposium online:
Thursday, January 19
Friday, January 20 

Saturday, January 21

The symposium has been made possible through the generous support of:
 Les Amis de la Bibliothèque Clémentine, 
the Howard and Carole Tanenbaum Family Charitable Foundation,
 the Consulat Général de France à Toronto.

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John Morris: Get the Picture
October 12, 2011
Ryerson University

Journalist John Godfrey Morris (1916) has spent a lifetime editing photographs for magazines and newspapers, working with hundreds of photographers, among them the great names of 20th century photography. He worked for the weekly picture magazine Life throughout World War II. As LIFE's London Picture Editor he was responsible for the coverage of the invasion of France on June 6, 1944 – D-Day, thus editing the historic photos of Robert Capa. After the war he became successively the Picture Editor of the U.S. monthly Ladies’ Home Journal, Executive Editor of Magnum Photos, Assistant Managing Editor for Graphics of The Washington Post and Picture Editor of The New York Times. In 1983 he moved to Paris, as the European correspondent of National Geographic. Now a freelance writer and editor, his primary concern is working for peace.

Morris’ lecture will address his work as a photo editor for over 6 decades. In addition to speaking about memorable photo-essays and the numerous publications for whom he worked, Morris will also speak about several Black Star photographers which he knew personally.

The lecture is made possible with the generous support of the Paul J. Ruhnke Memorial Fund.

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Edward Burtynsky: Oil – Symposium

Friday May 6 & Saturday May 7, 2011

Ryerson University

The Ryerson Image Centre presents a symposium in conjunction with Edward Burtynsky: Oil which brings together top scientific and arts industry experts for two days of discussion about essential issues of oil, planetary sustainability, and the energy options available to us, from both the scientific and aesthetic points of view.

The symposium is made possible with the generous support of the Nicholas Metivier Gallery.

Archived video from the symposium:

• Keynote addresses by William Rees and David Harris
• Interview with Edward Burtynsky and Keynote address by Tom Rand
• Innovations for the Future. The Final Decades of Oil and Beyond – Scientific Panel Discussion
  (Lisa Margonelli, Tom Rand, William Rees, Richard Sears, David Naylor, moderated by Edward Burtynsky)
• Photography as Intervention – Aesthetics Panel Discussion
  (Sarah Milroy, Michael Mitchell, Paul Roth, Robert Burley, moderated by Eleanor Wachtel)
  

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Black Star and the Civil Rights Movement

February 16, 2011 

Ryerson University

The Ryerson Image Centre presents “Black Star and the Civil Rights Movement,” a lively discussion with Bob Fitch and Matt Herron. Fitch has been recognized for his photographs of day-to-day Civil Rights Movement events and his extensive documentation of peace and social justice activities in the 1960s and ’70s. Herron, is a photojournalist and documentary photographer who organized the Southern Documentary Project — one of the more important bodies of documentary images from the Civil Rights era. The discussion is moderated by Mark Sealy, Director of Autograph, the Association of Black Photographers, in London, England, and curator of the upcoming exhibition “Human Rights and Human Wrongs” (January – April 2013).

• Archived video from the discussion is available here.

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Towards Forever…an Indigenous Art Historical Worldview

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Ryerson University

 Steven Loft, curator, theorist, writer, National Visiting Trudeau Fellow at Ryerson University and Scholar-in-Residence at the Ryerson Image Centre, presents his inaugural lecture, “Towards Forever…..an Indigenous Art Historical Worldview,” at Ryerson University. Loft’s lecture addresses how we must create radical, critical and culturally dynamic dialogue about indigenous cultural sovereignty as we develop a new approach to art history from the perspective of indigenous cultures.

• Archived video from the lecture is available here.

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Photographing an Era: The ‘60s & ‘70s
Pickerell | Schapiro | Ward
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Ryerson University

The 1960s and 1970s were defined by photojournalism. Presidents, world leaders and celebrities world-wide opened doors to photojournalists and allowed unparalleled access to their family lives, homes, offices and movie sets.

Join us for a lively panel discussion with four photographers from these captivating decades. Dennis Brack, James Pickerell, Steve Schapiro and Fred Ward will discuss capturing historical events such as the Vietnam War, the civil-rights movement, mass political rallies and the Kennedy era.

• Archived video from the discussion is available here.

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KODAK LECTURE SERIES | CONTACT LECTURE SERIES

The Kodak Lecture Series (1975 – 2009) was an international lecture series programmed by the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. This unique program featured over 200 photo-based artists, filmmakers, curators, writers and theorists discussing their work in front of an audience made up of the city's cultural community.

Since 1975, all of the lectures have been audio taped and are held in the collections of Ryerson Image Centre for reference. Beginning in 2003 the lectures have also been videotaped and are available online.

Since 2009, the lecture series has been know as the CONTACT Lecture Series, co-presented by the Ryerson Image Centre, the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University, and the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

• List of Kodak Lecturers (1975 – 2005)
  
• Online archive of Kodak Lecturers (2003 – 2011)