I've never met Canadian photographer Ernest
Cadegan, but I have corresponded with him and feel I know
him from his posts to Qiang Li's photocritique.net
and his comments on others' posts there. He seems to be a very
reasonable man: not a crybaby, not a prima donna and not a
sybarite, neither a Lucullus nor a Trimalchio – in other
words, not the kind of loon Hollywood puts on the screen when
they want to show you a bona fide artist. Yet b.f.a. is just
what he is, as you'll see from his gallery. (Unfortunately, much
of his best work isn't featured there. Example: "Forming
Up".)
Why are so many good photographers Canadian, and why are
the Canadians so little known? One of the best, and least known,
is J.P.
Zorn. His lack of recognition I can only attribute to a
salutary shyness on his part, or maybe simple indifference to
self-advertisement. He doesn't even have a web page – the
link I gave is to his portfolio on usefilm.com.
JPZ's photos are eminently, egregiously and gorgeously
static. Recent work is dark and low-key in every sense. His
digital images have the look of tarnished silver. (Example:
nightstand.)
He also shows Polaroids, SX-70 cameos as haunting as they are
inconsequential. (Example: gun
range.)
Inconsequential, yes. Another Canadian, Bruce
MacNeil of Toronto, specializes in large-format portraits of
inconsequential people. His easy art turns them into something
monumental – maybe the best thing that ever happened to
them. Example: Untitled
portrait
Paul Bracey's not a Canadian, though he tells me he does
belong to the Canadian Alpine Club. His
website is as beautifully designed and realized as mine is
crude and ugly. His photos have a stylish surface that hides
their depth of feeling until you dive in; then he's gotcha. But
wait, that's a generality, and (as we know) all generalities are
false. His range is too wide for flip metaphors. Best to visit
the gallery and see for yourself.
R. Gardiner is a
self-made mystery, who posted eccentric and intelligent
critiques on Qiang Li's forum for years under the handle “Hil.”
Like me, he or she preferred a little gender ambiguity –
R. Gardiner seems to be a guy, but Hil was assumed to be a girl.
(Qu'importe, a la fin – on est tous dans la meme
galère, en train de couler, glou glou.) Hil posted
few good photos on photocritique.net, but those few were
excellent, especially the photos of street confrontations and
political demonstrations, where she managed to capture something
beyond politics: the spirit and excitement and solidarity that
makes demonstrations, well, fun, at least in retrospect.
R.G./Hil's medium is black and white film. Example: Snow
Hat. From 2001 through most of 2003 she, he or it was a New
Yorker. Now they live in London.
Christel Dall is mercurial, and like a bead of mercury
she's hard to finger. Certainly she's a photographer, but many
of her photos are springboards to something else, usually but
not always graphical. (Wish I had her talent for typography.) I
suppose I'm making her sound more mysterious than she is; best
simply to go to her
website and have a look for yourself. Example: Lines
from Herman Hesse. (I wish she'd do the last chapter of
Wittgenstein's Tractatus.)
BTW, like Nils Bohr and
Victor Borge and Hamlet, C.D. is Danish.
grant Lamos is back. His Web presence was diminished for
a while – his site vanished. New York based (currently
out of Brooklyn), he concentrates on black and white “street”
photography. Odd, the way jargon changes. Candid photography,
available-light, whatever; maybe “Leica photography”
comes closest, with its suggestion of fortuitous
capture plus high technical quality. He does use a Leica now
and then.
FWIW, his photography's influenced my own –
not his people pictures, but his (rare) straight nature shots.
I'd give a pretty for a print of his classic “Water”
photo, which I still think of quite often, though it was only
online for a few days, and that was years ago.
Years?
Yes, it's been years. For several years Grant was the bad boy
of photocritique.net. When some vandal uploaded a scanned porn
photo, he critiqued it as though it were some new kid's
promising first post; that kind of thing. He's mellowed
latterly – haven't we all – but his work, though
always insouciant, hasn't lost its edge.
Later (8/10/2005). Grant's recent stuff can be found at http://streetzen.net/index.php?x=browse.
He's grown up quite a bit over the last few years. Example:
Portrait.
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