Over 900 photos | 30 photographers from Québec and elsewhere, recognized or emerging | 20 activities in the presence of photographers | 14 host municipalities in the Gaspé

On the theme of “Shaping the Course,” the third edition of Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie en Gaspésie, being held in the summer of 2012, is an invitation to travel the Gaspé Peninsula and follow the artistic trajectory of over 30 photographers from the region and elsewhere.

The holding of Rencontres here means that a tour of the Gaspé amounts to a trip around the world. “Our objective is to inhabit the huge Gaspé territory, and to use all the means placed at our disposal to present and champion artists’ work,” emphasizes Rencontres executive and artistic director Claude Goulet.

The focus of Rencontres this year is the role of the artist in society, the idea being to provide experiences for the eye and food for thought while addressing different esthetics, different probings of the landscape, the environment, the region and the representation of day-to-day life.

From August 18 to 25, professional week is taking place, which will bring together all the photographers participating in Rencontres around the subject of creation. That week constitutes a unique opportunity for the public to meet – at projections, workshops and lectures – the more than 30 professional and emerging photographers from the Gaspé, elsewhere in Québec, and from Canada, the United States and Europe.

The public can visit the photographic installations and exhibits from July 6 to September 10 in the 14 host municipalities: Cap-Chat, Marsoui, Rivière-à-Claude, Grande-Vallée, Gaspé, Percé, Chandler, Paspébiac, Bonaventure, New Richmond, Maria, Carleton-sur-Mer, Nouvelle and Matapedia.

Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie is an invitation to come and meet these artists in a region where photographs and landscapes unite around an artistic project. For further details: photogaspesie.ca.

RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE EN GASPÉSIE
3rd Edition: Shaping The Course
Exhibitions : July 6 through September 12, 2012
Professional Week : August 18 through 25, 2012

›› View video interviews featuring guest photographers here.
›› View a full schedule of the summer’s events here.

© Anja Neidringhaus, At War
© Vanessa Winship, Georgia
© Jocelyne Alloucherie, Sirènes, 511 Gallery, New York

© Kate Elliott, Courtesy The Photographers’ Gallery

Likely few would consider animated GIF images–those primitive computer animations often just a few pixels wide–fit enough for a photography exhibition. Perhaps that’s because there has yet to be a space fit enough to exhibit them. Now, London’s Photographers’ Gallery, which finally reopened this May with double the exhibition space after an 18-month, £9.2m renovation, offers digital facilities to support a rapidly evolving medium.

One of the main reasons behind the renovation which began in 2010, Gallery Director Brett Rogers says in a video interview with the Guardian, was to develop ”facilities that are fit for purpose in the 21st century, to show works of a larger scale, but also to reflect the conditions in which most people experience photography.”

The Soho gallery was the first independent public space in Britain devoted to photography when it was founded in the 1970s. Today, in addition to three floors of gallery space, room enough for the commanding, large-scale prints in their inaugural exhibition of Edward Burtynsky’s oil photographs (on view through July 1, 2012), they’ve also built what they call a “digital wall.”

This display, located near the gallery entrance, is made up of eight large screens presenting a running program of digital images visible from the outside street. Wendy McMurdo, one of 40 artists that includes Penelope Umbrico, was asked to produce a moving image GIF for the wall by Katrina Sluis, the galley’s new curator of digital programing. McMurdo writes on the FOAM blog on the “joy” of contributing to their inaugural digital exhibition Born in 1987: the animated GIF (on view through July 1, 2012). This initiative, McMurdo says, demonstrates the gallery’s “recognition that it is in the digital and social domain that photography must, ultimately, discover its new purposes and new meaning.”

On the other hand, the Photographers’ Gallery is also offering opportunity to counterbalance what Edwin Heathcote for the Financial Times calls the “culture of browsing and glancing”–when people end up scanning thousands of images a day–that has come to prominence with such development. One room in the space is dedicated to exhibiting a single image that will change four times a year.

Moreover, their new education center doubles as a camera obscura, which in conjunction with the digital wall, Rogers says, should “enable people to reflect on the history of optics,” in its entirety.

Burtynsky: Oil
Exhibition on view:
May 19 – July 1, 2012

Born in 1987: the animated GIF
Exhibition on view:
May 19 – July 1, 2012

This Sunday, June 3, 2012 at 3:00 pm, join Katrina Sluis for a FREE discussion on “Curating the Digital Image.”

The Photographers’ Gallery
16 – 18 Ramillies Street
London, UK W1F 7LW
+44(0)20 7087 9300

As part of the Lincoln PhotoFest in February 2009, a community-wide celebration of photography, the Sheldon Museum of Art presents an exceptional group exhibition, Evolving Eden: Three Photographic Perspectives, featuring Paris—New York—Shanghai, a fifteen-year project by acclaimed Dutch artist Hans Eijkelboom. In the exhibition and recent book already in its second printing, Eijkelboom creates a clever and witty study of three major cities, selected for having been (or promising to be) the cultural capital of its time. His deadpan, note-taking process, which is in line with the works of Ed Ruscha, Joseph Kosuth, and Hans-Peter Feldman, depicts modern city life in a series of ingenious snapshot-style grids, which enable the viewer to simultaneously compare the photographic studies of each metropolis and its citizens. The work reveals stunning similarities between the three cities. As Eijkelboom writes in the accompanying book, “Globalization, combined with the desire of cities for visually spectacular elements, is leading to the appearance everywhere of city centers that look the same and where identical products are sold.” This group exhibition presenting diverse viewpoints on our contemporary world also includes artists Arno Rafael Minkkinen and Edward Burtynsky.

Click here to listen to Hans Eijkelboom speak about his work via Sheldon Museum of Art.

Click here to purchase Paris—New York—Shanghai through Aperture.

Exhibition on View:
Friday, February 6, 2009 –Sunday, July 31, 2009

FREE

Sheldon Museum of Art
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
12th and R Street
Lincoln, Nebraska
(402) 472-4258