Critical Writing Index

Photo Sampler Immature

by John Bentley Mays

The Globe and Mail, Sept. 17, 1982, p. 1

Part of the selection process employed by Jayce Salloum, curator of New Canadian Photography was arbitrary, but it resulted in an eclectic exhibit at the Canadian Centre for Photography, displaying both the best and worst of Canadian photography in the 80s. While criticizing some of the 150 works as bland and boring and praising others as wryly theatrical and sophisticated, John Bentley Mays refers to the deep divide in the 'quality' of this cross-section of new Canadian 'camera artists'. Mays finds hope for Canadian photography in the works that eschew a worn-out obsession with formalism and demonstrate a rethinking of 'narrative, emblem and tableau.'

ITEM 1982.057 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Peter MacKendrick

Alison Rossiter

Linda Duvall

Terry Ewaksiuk

Chick Rice

Rafael Goldchain

Lorraine Gilbert

Shelagh Alexander

Paranoid StateJoyan Saunders

Eldon Garnet

David Buchan

Margaret Belisle