Arts & Culture

There are three, literally out-of-this-world, photography exhibitions on
in Toronto and nearby at the moment.  I decided to see all of them!
The first one I went to see was "Genesis," by internationally renowned
photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, on at the Royal Ontario Museum
until September 2.  The Toronto Star called Sebastião Salgado "the
greatest landscape photographer of his time" and "Genesis" "a celebration
of planetary health."

Sebastião Salgado travelled for eight years to 32 different locations around
the world to capture landscapes, seascapes and people untouched by modern
society.  As I walked around the exhibition, I was entranced by Sebastião Selgado's
images, from his colonies of penguins in Antarctica, to Victoria Falls on the
Zambezi River, to the portrait of a young woman in Southern Sudan, to a
leopard in Namibia, to Kluane National Park in Canada.  This quote by
Sebastião Salgado, printed on the wall of the Roloff Beny Gallery at the
Royal Ontario Museum, powerfully conveys the photographer's feelings
about his images and this planet:

        The story that I tell in my pictures is my story, viewed from
        my perspective.  Photography is my language and I write
        it with the camera as my pen.  We are living in an important
        moment for our planet.  The photographs are a way of
        sharing this historical moment.

You can go for free to the Royal Ontario Museum and see this exhibition with
a Sun Life Financial Museum + Arts Pass.  If you do go, and want to see the entire
"Genesis" exhibition of over 140 images, it is in two separate parts of the museum:
on level 4 in the Roloff Beny Gallery; and on level 3 in the third floor centre block.

Edward Burtynsky's "The Landscape That We Change" and Ansel Adams'
"Masterworks" are the second and third out-of-this-world photography
exhibitions on now in the Toronto area.  I went to the McMichael collection
in Kleinberg to see both exhibitions, and they are an outstanding and
inspired pairing. 

Renowned Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky says that "nature
transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work." 
At the McMichael exhibition, Edward Burtynsky's large-format images of
open-pit mines, burning tire piles, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico,
and the Alberta oil sands in Fort McMurray, powerfully show the extent
of this transformation.
 
 

By contrast, American photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams (1902 to 1984)
sought to celebrate the beauty of nature in his images.  The exhibition at McMichael
is comprised of images which Ansel Adams selected late in his life, and which he
considered to be his best.  I found particularly striking his images of: a rose and
driftwood; Monument Valley, Arizona; a moonrise in Hernandez, New Mexico; and
even a portrait of famed American photographer Alfred Stieglitz.

The Edward Burtynsky and Ansel Adams exhibitions continue at the McMichael
collection until September 29.