Photography 101:
push the button
Photography 101: push the button brings together more than 130 photographs by 58 Canadian and international artists created over the past 140 years. The selection spans a broad range of artistic practices—work by pioneering and historically significant photographers, important 20th century modernists, and contemporary artists who have made a contribution to the language of camera work. In the title, 101 is a reference to university introductory courses, but the subtitle push the button, acknowledges the impact of the camera in everyday life. The advent of the Kodak Brownie, single button-operated camera in 1900 offered the first democratic visual medium. When asked about his interest in photography—a question posed by the photohistorian Helmut Gernsheim—the Irish playwright and novelist George Bernard Shaw responded, “I always wanted to draw and paint … but I could not draw well enough to satisfy myself [so] I bought a box camera and began pushing the button.”
Shaw’s comment was a calculated understatement. Nothing is so simple, yet the act of pushing a button has provided a way of seeing and knowing the world: it would be unthinkable to imagine the modern age without photography. But if the history of the 20th century has been recorded by the camera, the story of the people has been “written” with it. The focus of this exhibition, therefore, is a story rather than a history of photography.
Compelling images are those etched in our consciousness because there is a visual text. A story can be read and re-read, and interpreted in many ways, thereby revealing the tissue of our own lives and the relationship to our physical and social environs.
Artists
Berenice Abbott, KC Adams, Roy Arden, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Claude-Philippe Benoit, Karl Blossfeldt, Joe Bodolai, Dianne Bos, Paul Buchanan, Julia Margaret Cameron, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Chuck Close, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Lynne Cohen, Dominique Cruchet, Christine Davis, Christos Dikeakos, Harold Edgerton, Robert Frank, Angela Grauerholz, Richard Harrington, Paul B. Haviland, Shari Hatt, Fred Herzog, Thaddeus Holownia, General Idea, Don Jean-Louis, Yousuf Karsh, André Kertész, James Lahey, Suzy Lake, Peter McCallum, Arnaud Maggs, Liz Magor, Annette Mangaard, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ray K. Metzker, Michael Mitchell, Arnold Newman, Brenda Francis Pelkey, Peter and Aggeok Pitseolak, Ron Poling, Richard Prince, Man Ray, Reinhard Reitzenstein, Mark Ruwedel, Cindy Sherman, Eric Snell, Lionel F. Stevenson, Edward Steichen, Barbara Steinman, Alfred Stieglitz, Stephen Waddell, Jeff Wall, Julian Wasser and
George S. Zimbel