World Press Photo 16: Montreal 2016

Montreal World Press Photo 16
August 31 - October 2, 2016

This is the Montréal's 11th edition of World Press Photo, with 150 winning images, as well as four complementary exhibits. It is held at Bonsecours Market in Old Montréal. 

Often compared to the Oscars of photography, the World Press Photo is the most prestigious annual competition of professional photography in the world. Gathered in Amsterdam in February, jury members awarded the first prizes to 41 photographers from 21 countries out of 83 000 submitted images from 5,775 photo journalists across 128 countries.

This emblematic exhibition that has kicked off Montréal’s cultural season, proposes a series of images depicting major events of the year, covered in eight categories. Themes such as the Paris attacks, the earthquake in Nepal, the refugee crisis and tensions in the Middle East are showcased amongst the photographs selected by a jury of 18 international professionals.

“The Montréal edition is one of the most popular amongst the hundred resented around the world”, stated Matthieu Rytz, president of the event. “Our privileged relationship with our visitors speaks volumes about the Montréal community’s curiosity and level of involvement in the evolution of our societies. It also demonstrates the relevance of presenting such a high quality window on the world”.

World Press Photo of the Year: Hope for a New Life

(Poto just below.)

The photo of the year has been awarded to Australian photographer Warren Richardson. Entitled Hope for a New Life, the winning photo in black and white depicts a man handing a baby through a razor wire barrier, crossing the border from Serbia into Hungary. 

Founded in 1955, World Press Photo is a non-profit organization with headquarters in Amsterdam. The foundation is committed to developing and encouraging the highest standards in photo journalism and documentaries worldwide. In the course of the year, the exhibition travels around a hundred cities in over 45 countries. World Press Photo benefits from the support of the Dutch Postcode Lottery and is sponsored worldwide by Canon.

After Montréal, the exhibition will be presented in Toronto, October 4 - 25, 2016, (Brookfield Place, Allen Lambert Galleria). Then it will travel back to the Province of Quebec, to be shown at the Chicoutimi Pulperie Regional Museum, November 3 - 27, 2016.

For more information, consult Montreal's World Press Photo 16 website here.

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The top most photo by Nadia Slejskova.

All other photos courtesy of World Press Photo.

Description of World Press Photos (from top to bottom):

Nature, 2nd prize stories – photo 2

© Brent Stirton, South Africa, Getty Images for National Geographic

Title: Ivory Wars 

November 17, 2014. Michael Oryem (29) poached elephant with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), operating mainly in the Garamba National Park in DRC. He says he was asked by LRA leader Joseph Kony to take ivory to him in Darfur, Sudan, and that the LRA trades the ivory to the Sudanese Army. Oryem defected from the LRA and helped take Ugandan forces through the border into the Central African Republic to retrieve a stash of ivory he had previously hidden. He is carrying two of the six tusks he hid.

General News, 3rd prize stories

© Daniel Berehulak, Australia, for The New York Times

Title: An Earthquake's Aftermath, Nepal

Nepalese villages watch a helicopter picking up a medical team, dropping aid at the edge of a makeshift landing zone in Gumda, Nepal, 09 May 2015.

Daily Life, 1st prize singles

 © Kevin Frayer, Canada, Getty Images

 Title: China's Coal Addiction

Chinese men pull a tricycle in a neighborhood next to a coal-fired power plant in Shanxi, China, on 26 November 2015. A history of heavy dependence on burning coal for energy has made China the source of nearly a third of the world's total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the toxic pollutants widely cited by scientists and environmentalists as the primary cause of global warming.

General News, 1st prize stories

© Sergey Ponomarev, Russia, for The New York Times

Title: Reporting Europe's Refugee Crisis

Refugees arrive by boat near the village of Skala on Lesbos, Greece, 16 November 2015.

World Press Photo of the Year

© Warren Richardson, Australia

Title: Hope for a New Life, Serbia/Hungary border

August 28, 2015. A baby is handed through a hole in a razor wire barrier, to a Syrian refugee who has already managed to cross the border from Serbia into Hungary, near Röszke. Hungary was hardening its stance towards refugees attempting to enter the country. In July, Hungary began construction on a four-meter-high barrier fence along the entire length of the frontier with Serbia, to close off border crossings through all but official routes. Refugees attempted to find ways through before the fence was completed on 14 September. This group had spent four hours hiding in an apple orchard at night, dodging border police, being gassed with pepper spray, and trying to find a way across.

Nature, 1st prize singles

 © Rohan Kelly, Australia, Daily Telegraph  

 Title: Storm Front on Bondi Beach

November 6, 2015. A massive shelf cloud moves towards Bondi Beach.The cloud was part of a weather front that brought violent thunderstorms, with local media reporting damaging winds, hailstones the size of golf balls, and heavy rainfall. Shelf clouds are low cloud banks often with smooth or layered surfaces, and black, turbulent bases.

Nature, 1st prize stories – photo 3

 © Tim Laman, USA

Tough Times for Orangutans

June 13, 2014. Orphan baby orangutans get a ride from their night cages to a patch of forest where they can play for a day, at the International Animal Rescue facility in Ketapang.

Sports, 3rd prize singles

 © Jonas Lindkvist, Sweden, for Dagens Nyheter

 Title: Neptun Synchro

 December 13, 2015. Members of Neptun swimming club’s synchronized swimming section perform in  sailboat position, during pre-Christmas Lucia festivities.Synchronized swimming demands advanced water  skills and requires strength, flexibility and breath control, as well as artistry and precise timing. Neptun has  nearly 100 members who participate in synchronized swimming, ranging from four to 65 years old.

Nature, 3rd prize stories – photo 3

 © Christian Ziegler, Germany, for National Geographic 

Title: Chameleon Under Pressure

 November 28, 2014. A dominant male of a rare turquoise form of panther chameleon displays its colors.

MAC 2016: Liz Magor

LIZ MAGOR

HABITUDE

EXAMINING THE HUMAN CONDITION THROUGH MATERIAL
June 22 - September 6, 2016

The Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art - Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) - is presenting the work of the Canadian artists Liz Magor. There are 75 of her works on view, spanning 40 years of her artistic output. This is a non-chronological display. The pieces are arranged thematically, which allows the viewer to see the major recurring themes that span through her artistic career, as well as the emotional range and materials explored by the artist. This is the largest exhibition of Liz Magor's work ever presented to the public.

John Zeppetelli, the MAC's Director and Chief Curator, observed that the works on view illustrate the scope of a practice the concerns of which “include interior psychological states of addiction and desire, of compulsion and consumption as well as ... how meaning is constructed through material forms and objects.”

In many of her sculptural installations Magor uses found objects, discarded items from a dumpster, to underline the material preoccupations of our times. There is a dichotomy present: the objects people create lead to progress, but the object's use-and-discard nature marginalizes human beings who produced them, leading to dependency and subjugation.

The exhibition presents a comment on human behaviour, and our relationship to things we collectively produce.

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For more information on this exhibition and the MAC museum, visit the museum's website.

MMFA 2016: Toulouse‐Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse‐Lautrec
ILLUSTRATES THE BELLE ÉPOQUE

June 18 - October 30, 2016

Organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) and The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., the exhibition brings together almost all of the most famous prints and posters by Toulouse‐Lautrec (1864‐1901), the remarkable French nineteenth‐century artist who revolutionized the art of printmaking. The exhibition gives the public the opportunity to admire close to 100 prints and posters from nearly the entire period of Toulouse‐Lautrec’s lithographic career, from 1891 to 1900, both iconic images and rarely exhibited unique proofs carefully chosen for their quality and colour.

The works at the exhibition are on loan from a private collector who assembled them in recent years. Almost all the exhibited prints are in superb condition, their ink and colour still brilliant. Thanks to the collector’s connoisseurship and his devoted care of the works in his expanding collection, which represents nearly all the lithographs executed by Toulouse‐Lautrec, the exhibition enables the public and the art professionals to explore and appreciate the artistic ambitions of Toulouse-Lautrec, and his masterful use of the lithographic medium.

In his lithographs, inspired by the Parisian burgeoning entertainment district, Toulouse‐Lautrec captured the scenes of the Belle Époque and its nightlife of popular cabarets and dance halls. The artist established a studio in the bohemian Montmartre and became a frequent visitor to lively hot spots like the Chat Noir, the Mirliton and the Moulin Rouge. His depiction of the cabarets' environment and entertainement created a portrait of that epoch's Parisian nightlife.

The exhibition includes rare and exceptional trial proofs, including some that have never before been catalogued or published. Among the never before exhibited works are unique impressions, such as the trial proof for Moulin Rouge – La Goulue, as well as very rare prints, such as the trial proofs and final proofs for Reine de Joie [Queen of Joy], May Milton, May Belfort, and the famous poster of Jane Avril.

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The exhibition also features four works by two close associates of Toulouse Lautrec: Louis Anquetin and Théophile Alexandre Steinlen. 

You can read more about Louis Anquetin’s painting L’Intérieur de chez Bruant: Le Mirliton (Inside Bruant’s Mirliton), 1886‐1887, which is being exhibited for the first time ever, and about and his pastel poster Au cirque (At the Circus), 1887, in my previous post here.

You can also read about the Théophile Steinlen’s a large‐format poster of the famous Tournée du Chat Noir, 1896, and his drawing in my post here.

For more information about the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibitions, visit the museum's website.

MMFA 2016: Louis Anquetin

Louis Anquetin
June 18 - October 30, 2016

A unique painting Inside Bruant’s Le Mirliton (L’Intérieur de chez Bruant: Le Mirliton) was unveiled Thursday, Jyne 9, 2016, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA). It is the work of a French painter and printmaker Louis Anquetin, who was one of the fathers of the technique cloisonnisme popular at the end of the nineteenth century. The canvas is included in the present MMFA exhibition devoted to Toulouse Lautrec. 

Forgotten for decades, the painting reappeared at Sotheby's auction that took place in New York in November, 2014. It was acquired by a private individual who landed it to MMFA for its first public exposure as part of the MMFA exhibition devoted to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

L’Intérieur de chez Bruant: Le Mirliton (Inside Bruant’s Mirliton) is a major rediscovery in terms of the art history of fin‐de‐siècle Paris. With vibrant brushstrokes and brilliant colours, Anquetin has conjured the dynamic culture of Montmartre in its heyday. He depicts several iconic figures, including La Goulue and Aristide Bruant, contemporaries of Toulouse‐Lautrec, as well as Toulouse‐Lautrec himself.

“Unknown to experts and specialists until very recently, this monumental work could only be imagined through its preparatory drawings, which have since been dispersed. It bears witness not only to Anquetin’s aesthetic modernity, but also to a deep change in the era’s artistic practices. From Toulouse‐Lautrec to Picasso, painters’ studios were no longer in the academies but in the streets, café‐concerts and cabarets,” stated Gilles Genty, art historian and guest curator of the exhibition Toulouse‐Lautrec Illustrates the Belle Époque.

Conceived as a record of an era, this painting was created in the style of bohemian artists. Anquetin drew the general outline of his composition in pastel, at the same time making a myriad of preparatory studies for each figure, sometimes even on wrapping paper. Those drawings were exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in March 1888.

Anquetin began the painting in a garret and continued working on it on site at the cabaret itself. The final painting on display represents several artists from the Belle Époque at the Mirliton, Aristide Bruant’s raucous café that was a frequent haunt of Anquetin and Toulouse‐Lautrec. The famous dancer Louise Weber, known as La Goulue, is depicted in the centre, leaning over the table, inviting us to enter. Charismatic and sensual, La Goulue caused a sensation in the cabarets with the chahut, her wild variation on the Can‐Can.

Facing the viewer are Émile Bernard and Marie Valette, Anquetin’s favourite model from 1886 to 1892 and who, in a very daring move for a woman at that time, is lighting up a cigarette in public. On their left is the tall, lean figure in a top hat, which was the trademarks of François Gauzi. Seated at the table to the right, with his back turned towards the viewers, is Paul Tampier. To the left is the painter Émile Bernard. And standing behind and to the left of him is Toulouse‐Lautrec, a regular at the Mirliton went on to revolutionize printmaking.

In the background is Aristide Bruant himsel, the owner of the establishment. Dressed in a red shirt, he stands on the bar's counter, hands on his hips, preparing to recite poetry. He was a huge success at Le Chat Noir, and decided to open his own cabaret, the Mirliton, in 1885. It became a veritable creative hub in the heart of Montmartre as well as one of the first establishments to permanently exhibit works by Toulouse‐Lautrec. 

Another work of Louis Anquetin is also included at the MMFA's Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition. It is a print entitled At the Circus.

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You can read about the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition here.

You can also read my post about the two works by Théophile Steinlen which are also included in the MMFA's Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition here.

For more information, visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website.

MMFA 2016: Théophile Steinlen

Théophile Alexandre Steinlen
June 18 - October 30, 2016

The above poster by Théophile Steinlen is included in the current Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' exhibition TOULOUSE-LAUTREC ILLUSTRATES THE BELLE ÉPOQUE. One more of his works is also on display at the exhibition, a drawing of a dance hall interior executed in coloured crayons.  

Théophile Steinlen was the Toulouse-Lautrec's contemporary. He was a Swiss-born painter and printmaker of the French Belle Époque. His permanent home was Montmartre, the realities and the environments of which were his favourite subjects throughout his life. He often painted scenes of some of the harsher aspects of life in that area of Paris.

Steinlen frequented the literary cabaret known as Le Chat Noir, founded by a fellow Swiss expatriate Louis Rodolphe Salis. It was there that Steinlen met and befriended writers such as Paul Verlaine, and artists Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Louis Anquetin, Jean-Louis Forain, Henry Somm, Adolphe Willette, Félix Vallotton, and Caran d’Ache, among others. All these writers and artists influenced each other and created works of art and literature that are still greatly valued today.

Visit MMFA exhibition TOULOUSE-LAUTREC ILLUSTRATES THE BELLE ÉPOQUE to see, among others, Steinlen's two original works, and to learn about the French Belle Epoque.

Click on the image of the poster above to enlarge it.

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You can read about the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition here.

You can also read my post about the two works by Louis Anquetin which are also included in the MMFA's Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition here. 
  

For more information about the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibitions, visit the museum's website.

Montreal First Peoples Festival 2016

Présence autochtone
Montreal First Peoples Festival
26th Edition

CELEBRATING FIRST NATIONS CULTURE
August 3 -10, 2016

This annual festival is very popular with the generalcpublic and also tourists who visit Montreal in August. Held in downtown Montreal, at Place des Festivals in the Quartier des spectacles, it attracts people of all the ages and many different backgrounds. This year, as always, there will be arts and crafts kiosks, stage concerts, dance performances, and film projections held both indoors and outdoors.

A travelling art exhibit

ᐊᐛᓯᔅ awaasis, a Naskapi word that means animal, is a travelling art exhibit that will begin in the Aboriginal community of Kawawachikamach (Naskapi Nation) in mid-July, and will travel to Montreal for the First Peoples Festival 2016. The exhibit will grow in scope as it travels, enabling the creations of a platform for exchanges between different Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples. The exhibit’s central theme, insects and animals, will help pinpoint the bio-cultural diversity involved in insect-plants-humans relations through two different cultures and spaces: the urban space of Montreal (Quebec) and the rural and sub-Arctic space of the Naskapi nation of Kawawachikamach (Quebec). 

Also, in the context of theMontreal First People Festival and in collaboration with LAND InSIGHTS, The Guild gallery presents PULPE FICTION, the latest exhibition by artist SYLVAIN RIVARD. The artworks by this multidisciplinary French Canadian and Abenaki artist depict a world nearer to First Nations’ identity than to that of the Québécois. The main part of his work draws a portrait of contemporary ethnographic art which lies beyond cultural hybridity. Through a dozen creations, Pulpe fiction proposes a reinterpretation of the Abenaki nation’s mythical and legendary culture. 

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The detailed schedule of all the activities will be available at the end of June, 2016 at www.presenceautochtone.ca

McCord 2016: Montreal Mansions

MONTREAL MANSIONS, 1974
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHARLES GURD

June 16 - November 16, 2016

The exhibition features 40 black and white photos, taken in natural light in 1974 by young Montreal architect and photo artist Charles C. Gurd. They immortalize a bygone era of Montreal's Edwardian style  homes, build from the 1910s to the 1930s by prominent Montreal businessmen (among them Louis-Joseph Forget) who hired the best architects of the day to build them luxurious mansions. The photographs illustrate the interiors of these exceptional mansions, which have since disappeared or have been altered, victims to changing times, tastes and new generations.

One of the homes portrayed in the exhibition was bequeathed to McGill University, while others changed ownership, such as the Forget mansion in Senneville and the Ogilvie mansion on Gouin Boulevard in Montreal’s east end. Marble floors and columns, oversized fireplaces and rich woodwork, and staircases and libraries built by the day’s top craftsmen all graced the homes’ elegant reception rooms, which were decorated with beautiful furniture and carpets, the tables gleaming with fine china and polished silverware. The prosperity and exquisite taste of the occupants was evident at every turn. The private mansions speak to the complexity of this North American bourgeoisie who at the time controlled much of Canada’s economy.

In 1974, Charles C. Gurd set out to preserve the memory of these mansions through photographs. He received support from many influential people of the day, including Gretta Chambers, a CBC radio reporter. He also obtained a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Equipped with a Leica M4, he received permission from the families to carry out his project.

The series of his black and white photos were made from some of his 6,000 35 mm negatives. In 2014, Gurd donated 1,337 negatives to the McCord Museum along with 325 inkjet prints produced in 2013. The photographs featured in the exhibition have been drawn from this collection.

Charles C. Gurd – Biographical notes

Born in Montreal in 1950, Charles C. Gurd earned a degree in psychology from McGill University (1971) and an architecture degree from Rice University in Houston, Texas (1976). While pursuing an international career in architecture, he practiced photography and painting – as he continues to do today. A self-taught photographer, in the 1960s Gurd was influenced by the documentary style of Sam Tata, Gabor Szilasi, Louise Abbott and Brian Merrett. He lives and works in Victoria, British Columbia, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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For more information, visit the McCord Museum website.