Brodovitch had no interest …

Following the blurring of his first photographs Brodovitch might have turned to any vaiety of flash techniques, including Dr. Harold Edgerton’s recently introduced electronic flash, as did Barbara Morgan and Gjon Mili in their own dance photographs at this same time. But Brodovitch has no interest in arresting motion; he knew that the animal vitality and the suggestive power of the dancers’ movements were at the very heart of ballet’s unique stage atmosphere. In a leap of imagination, he suddenly saw the “mistakes” of his first photographs not as irredeemable defects, but as intriguing new possibilities. instead of eliminating them, he determined to push them even further.

Christopher Phillips
“Brodovitch on Ballet” American Photographer (December 1981).

Kevin Head

To make art with a photographic portrait is always a collaborative act. As with any duo the balance tips often, sometimes to the photographer, sometimes to the subject. It is the peculiar nature of this relationship that the results, the mixture of observer and observed, are inseparable. If this were theatre we would be unable to separate the actors from the play. If it were life drawing, it would be as if the subject's hand reached over the paper and corrected our lines.

He was a victorian outcast ...

By the 1950s, Jones and his wife were still living in Lincolnshire with no electricity or running water. He was a Victorian outcast who could not reconcile himself to the realities of living in the modern age. His children were shocked to find that for many years he did not claim his rightful old age pension. Always a proud man, he considered it charity. He died at age 92 on November 15, 1959. These would be the salient events of a seemingly solid, unassuming, yet useful life except for a discovery made twenty-two years later.

Robert Flynn Johnson
Introduction to Plant Kingdoms: The Photographs of Charles Jones

Exhibition - Gibson's Art Gallery

I'm happy to announce a new show scheduled for August, 2013. The portraits will hang in the Eve Smart Gallery in the newly renovated Gibsons Art Gallery. The show will run from August 1 to September 2, 2013.

There will be a reception on Sunday August 3rd from 2-4 pm. This reception will also be the official launch of my first book. Portraits Found and Taken is a hardcover edition containing 144 pages of black and white portraits from the past three years. The book features a preface by Vancouver writer, photographer, and publisher Stephen Osborne.

The book is produced in a limited edition of 300 copies, signed and numbered. Subjects will each receive a copy. If you would like secure a copy before the release date, I've made the book is available to pre-order online here.

I look forward to seeing you at the show.

Tim McLaughlin

You are never welcome ...

You are never welcome. You have to spend time. You have to be patient. I’m never in a hurry. I have to connect with 100 people to convince one. I live with people. I try to transmit why I am so fascinated with them. And finally they say, ‘Pierre, let’s try.’

Pierre Gonnord
interview with Andrew Alexander in Arts Atl.

The portrait is finished ...

The Portrait is finished when I am able to leave my model to himself, to his thoughts, to his own mind, as if he were at home without any witness.

Patrick Faigenbaum
Text panel at the Vancouver Art Gallery Exhibition, 2013

The portrait as stage play ...

In the 19th century, the portrait resembled a small, private stage play. The subject of the portrait got ready, dressed appropriately, and set off the photographer’s. Once there, he entered the studio — which, with its plethora of props and necessary items such as chairs, armchairs, drapes, pictures and statuettes was reminiscent of a small stage — and was fitted into this grid of accessories. The background and furnishings were chosen, the pose and attitude rehearsed — “Wouldn’t you like to be holding a book in your hands?” — and finally the lighting was set up.

Urs Stahel
Afterwards: “After the climax” as a focal element in Rineke Dijkstra’a portrait photography