Nostalgia imbedded in the art of daily photographs

Unique exhibition Pop Photographica: Photography's Objects in Everyday Life, 1842-1969 at Art Gallery of Ontario

The Art Gallery of Ontario has discovered kitsch! Believe me, this is an exciting improvement in curatorial direction and speaks to the growing movement towards the dismantling of the dead white man's prominence in the institutional space.
With this latest show, Pop Photographica: Photography's Objects in Everyday Life, 1842-1969, we all are able to identify with the creative process, as each of us has snapped a photo or participated in the multitude of photographic practices. We take for granted that recording our lives has almost usurped living them out, and yet technology speeds uncontrollably ahead of the events themselves, as if it had a hidden agenda. Add to the random photoshoot, the personal art object. It could be a vanity mirror in a teenager's bedroom or the fridge, but collaging photos onto surfaces has again become common practice.
So this show, which explores how photographs have been used to adorn and personalize everyday objects seems to come from a familiar origin - that is, nostalgia.
Matthew Teitelbaum, AGO Director and CEO notes that "Photography empowers us to make the everyday intensely personal. This exhibition demonstrates how individuals have used photography to declare 'I am here'." This inherent declaration of being in the act of shooting, harvesting, and displaying photos has taken on a further narrative twist when combined with the contours of an object. It is one narrative layered onto another. These objects appear crafty and consumerish, as if they could be purchased. And yet their very uniqueness and fragile taped-together quality makes the objects glow as only art can.
But unlike so many art shows, the art stars here are the collectors, not the creators. They unfortunately remain anonymous, which lends itself to even further identification between viewer and viewed. What do we feel when we see a mourning bracelet made of woven and braided hair, worn by a daughter, that features a portrait of a father and a miniature of the mother as a young girl on the reverse, while an attached silver charm reveals the tiniest lock of hair?
How does our understanding of the doll transform when we see an African-American handmade rag doll that once belonged to a little girl whose own face is the telltale imprint on the photographic face of her playmate? Does it make us want to rethink our own trips when we witness a pillow cover of 36 chain-stitched cyanotype images printed on cotton which tells the story of a young man's travels and adventures? Does Ansel Adams become any less of an artist when we see his view of Yosemite Valley replicated and wrapped around a Hills Brothers coffee tin, extolling this natural wonder with a certain commercial irony?
If anything, I think this heightens the way we look at the everyday objects in our lives. The challenge today is to find a space in Toronto that does not have some image plastered over it.
Daile Kaplan, photo historian and guest curator of the exhibition, coined the term "pop photographica" to describe these objects from popular culture that incorporate photographic images. Ms. Kaplan, who is also Vice President and Director of Photographs at Swann Galleries, New York, contributes new insight to photography's populist roots and explores its impact on our collective cultural experience since the daguerrian era to the late 1960s.
Accompanying this diverse collection of pop-art objects, is a complementary installation; Untitled Photographs: Fictions & Fantasies, will feature 33 anonymous photographic prints of unknown origin. During the course of the exhibition, personal interpretations of the mysteries embedded in these images will be added to the exhibition through texts from artists, a writer and a historian.
You can even add your own interpretations. The anonymity of the photo has an inherent excitement to it because as a piece of someone's inadvertent story, it has ended up in your hands. Will you take that anonymous print and create an iron-on for a T-shirt? Will you take the print and make it into a paper airplane and throw it into the sky? The possibilities for transformation are endless.
Pop Photographica: Photography's Objects in Everyday Life, 1842-1969 shows at the Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas St. West, from April 26 to July 20. For more information call 416-979-6660.

Publication Date: 2003-04-20
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