Pingyao International Photography Festival 2023

I was fortunate to have a portfolio of my 1980s Toronto photos in the 2023 Pingyao International Photography Festival. The festival ran from September 19th to 25th in Pingyao, North China’s Shanxi province. Themed “New Light, New Orientation,” the six-day festival  attracted 13,961 works by over 2,000 photographers from 28 countries.

Curator Don Snyder invited eight photographers to be part of “Image, Document, Memory: Photographs from Canada.” Here is his introduction to the exhibit:

Image, Document, Memory: Photographs from Canada

While thinking about images for the 2023 Pingyao Festival, my first goal was to select work that would be new to the audience in Pingyao. I also wanted to represent approaches to image-making that would range from traditional to highly experimental, and to exhibit photographs from many different parts of Canada.

I considered nearly 50 portfolios and selected eight photographers to invite. While their photographic styles are very different, common themes can be found that link the various portfolios together. Every photographer I spoke with told me they had been deeply affected by the pandemic, and that they had often turned to more personal image-making during this time. This is where the theme of “The Poetic Image” originated, exemplified by the photographs included here from Kendall Townend, Pierre Tremblay and Alexander Alter. These images deal with landscape, time and memory, and the inner workings of the imagination, utilizing methods and processes that blend the uniquely photographic with the composite, layered, and digital imagery.

Many photographers talked about developing a new appreciation for the workers in manufacturing and transportation–workers who kept people everywhere supplied and fed during times of lockdown. This is where the idea to include the portfolios about “Labor and Commerce” originated. Images from Workspace Canada, by Martin Weinhold, and 23 Days at Sea, by Christopher Boyne were chosen for this component of the exhibition.

For the portfolios in Part III, “Place and Culture”, several photographers I spoke with had found themselves reviewing personal archives and images from past years during the pandemic, drawn to explore photography’s unique ability to juxtapose past and present time. The sequences in this group were selected from Toronto Days and Toronto Flashback by Avard Woolaver, and from Kensington Market: Meditations on Home by Wayne Salmon. These portfolios examine the relationships between memory and present time, and between place and a sense of belonging.

Lastly, as an educator I was keenly aware of the changes the pandemic brought to the world of art education. “Making and Thinking: The Idea of a Photographic Workshop” is a group project produced by my colleague Rob Davidson and his students in a situation where they were unable to meet for in-person classes. The images made during this online workshop, available in either book or exhibition form, point to new possibilities for photographic education in an environment of networked communication, and make a strong case for this mode of teaching in the future.

Don Snyder

Here are the photos as they appeared in the exhibition:

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