Author: Richard Huang
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Voices from the Pandemic #1
The first eight recordings collected for the FACE2020 pandemic photography exhibition, preserved here in full so that healthcare workers and ordinary residents can describe, in their own unedited words, the uncertainty of the early lockdown and how they responded.
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The Playground Stilled
Across the Greater Toronto Area, I photographed children’s playgrounds cordoned off with yellow tape—their bright, deserted structures recording how abruptly the pandemic drained neighbourhoods of their usual noise and joy.
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Roadside Remembrance
A search for roadside memorials of flowers, crosses, and white bicycles in Canada—and, amid the deserted streets of the pandemic, a reflection on accidents, remembrance, and the fragility of life.
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The Artist Project Toronto 2020: A Visit
At Toronto’s The Artist Project, I turned my attention from the works to their makers, using conversations and portraits to explore their ideas, methods, and ways of presenting art to the market.
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The Story of the Stone
Beginning with the ancient boulders of Devonian Square, this essay observes how natural patterns, human tool marks, and modern graffiti overlap, and reflects through a single stone surface on order, expression, and urban life.
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Footprints Around the World on Film: Notes from an Exhibition
Growing weary of the elaborate techniques behind spectacular photographs, the author turns to film and rediscovers, at a small Hong Kong exhibition, the simple pleasures of travel, the darkroom, and looking at photographs for their own sake.
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Willy Ronis: A Photographic Journey — Exhibition Notes
At the University of Hong Kong, an eight-decade retrospective reveals Willy Ronis’s enduring fascination with chance encounters, human warmth, and everyday life among family, friends, and the people of Paris.
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Multitude, Solitude: Reflections on the Photographs of Dave Heath
An unaffordable photobook led me to the National Gallery of Canada, where I traced Dave Heath’s evolution from black-and-white street photography to his late color work—and the enduring tension between loneliness and the longing for connection.
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Reflections on the Toronto Photography Festival (1)
Beginning with Chinese artist Tong Lam’s project on mobile film screenings in China, this visit to the Toronto Photography Festival considers the relationship between image technology, shared viewing experiences, and political communication.
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Reflections on the Toronto Photography Festival (2)
Patty Maher’s images of anonymous women in natural settings—with faces concealed and figures juxtaposed against the landscape—prompt reflections on public space, private experience, and the viewer’s place within the work.