Notes
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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From Sichuan Teahouses and Street Life to Visages, made in the aftermath of the Wenchuan earthquake, this profile traces how documentary photographer Chen Jin immersed himself in everyday street life over many years, recording regional culture and the joys and sorrows of ordinary people in unadorned images.
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Through ninety landscapes by Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and others, this essay explores how artists at the turn of the twentieth century sought spiritual refuge amid war, industrialization, and a crisis of faith.
