No matter how you slice it, there is no denying that photography is an expensive hobby. Cameras do not come cheap. Neither do lenses. Gear can genuinely liberate your creativity, enhance the experience of getting the shot, or just simplify your workflow. Still, more often than not, the latest and greatest will cost you a pretty penny. Obviously, you do not always need flagship products to make your images stand out. On the one hand, you have those who claim “gear does not matter,” which can be true but sometimes not true at all. On the other hand, you have those who believe “you get what you pay for,” which can also be accurate but not always. There are definitely ways to mitigate your expenses in photography so let’s discuss three easy ways to save money but also three corner-cutting habits that may hurt you more than you realize.

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Stop Paying for Features You do Not Need

Manufacturers are packing camera bodies with more technologies every six months, and these still serve as the perfect basis to justify the high price tag that comes with it. One of the easiest ways to save money in photography is simply by cutting through the noise and being honest about what you really need. Do you need 20 frames a second for wedding work? How likely are you to shoot 6400 ISO on your landscape outings?

As much as I love my R5, for my use cases, I haven’t seen any practical difference from the original R I still use on a daily basis. I need to print above 3 feet wide to see a material improvement in image quality, and yes, I get a little bit more cropping power in post-processing, but it does not go much further than that. I am yet to shoot a single minute of video on any of my camera bodies.

This is true for any manufacturer. What exactly are you getting from an X-T4 that the X-S10 cannot provide? Don’t go for the Z9 when the Z7 first-gen is already offering 1^st in-class resolution and dynamic range unless you need the extra speed for action and wildlife shooting.

Third-party is Nothing to be Feared

Twenty years ago, Sigma and Tamron were a cheap entry point for enthusiasts who could not afford the real thing. It was a decent offering, but you had to compromise with various aberrations and autofocus limitations, the typical story of “YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR” as performance was in line with the price. Fast forward to today and those are still much cheaper than the L series or G Master, but they rival and sometimes exceed the performance of the big guys. We even reached a point where Tamron and Sigma are producing lenses for some of the biggest names.

This is not limited to lenses. If you think about lighting, there are very few scenarios where any Godox user will miss Canon or Profoto expensive speedlights.

Go Easy on the Accessories.

Photography tends to be taught by experienced shooters who have developed habits in a previous era. Some of those habits are not necessary today.

One example is graduated filters. The dynamic range of modern sensors has gone a long way, and, in most situations, you can simply expose for the highlight and recover shadows in post with minimum noise. If your sensor might not handle this correctly, every manufacturer has a bracketing mode that will let you blend images in-camera or afterward.

The same can be said about a trigger remote. Between the built-in intervalometer and the 2/10 seconds delay, this is another expense you might want to avoid.

Having said that, there are shortcuts one might consider that will end up costing more in the long run. Even though tempting, those are not recommended ways to save money in photography.

Cheap Tripods are Useless.

The worst offenders in this category tends to be tripods. More specifically, cheap tripods. Those tend to lack the substance and sturdiness required to hold even a light mirrorless setup. Weak aluminum legs that shake with every breeze will hurt your photography more than anything else. Your long exposures will often be soft. You might even end up replacing a lens thinking it is not sharp enough when in fact, it is the micro jitters that are to blame.

Also, poor materials may often break or get rusty within a year or two, especially if you spend a lot of time around coastlines and salty water. You are bound to spend more money replacing them over a long period of time than if you went for a quality offering right away.

Avoid Cheap Filters

Finding the right filter can be a difficult task as even within the same brand, quality can be inconsistent. Filters will also behave differently with every lens as coating and optics can vary. A screw-on filter can add vignetting to a wide-angle lens when it is outstanding on a telephoto zoom. Uneven polarization and color cast are also some of the recurrent issues with poor quality filters. We would recommend buying from a reputable source with a decent return policy.

Get the Right Bag for You

Whether it is a sling for a quick outing in the city or a backpack for a week-long hike in the mountains, carrying and protecting your gear is of tremendous value. An uncomfortable bag will have you tired much sooner, especially if your kit is on the heavier side. It can be the difference between staying out longer to get the shot or cutting the session short.

Poor padding or separations can expose your lenses to rub against one another and get markings that will decrease their resale value. Worst, you can get scratches on the back screen of your camera if not stored properly. There is no perfect bag for every single scenario but take your time to find the best possible fit for you; it will pay dividends in the long run.

To mark Princess Charlotte’s eighth birthday on 2 May, the Prince and Princess of Wales have shared a new photograph of the young royal. Taken by Kate in Windsor over this bank holiday weekend, the image shows a beaming Charlotte wearing a white floral dress as she relaxes in a wicker chair.

The Waleses have a tradition of releasing previously unseen portraits on special occasions, often taken by Kate, who is known for her love of photography. For Prince George’s ninth birthday last July, the couple shared a photograph of their eldest child on the beach, during the family’s summer holiday in the UK. Meanwhile, for Prince Louis’s fifth birthday last month, the royals posted a sweet snap of Prince Louis being pushed in a wheelbarrow by his mother, this time taken by photographer Millie Pilkington.

It’s a busy few weeks for the family, with the Prince and Princess of Wales celebrating their 12th wedding anniversary on 29 April. The couple shared an informal photograph of themselves on bicycles to mark the occasion, with Kate wearing a white broderie anglaise blouse with jeans, and Prince William also off-duty in denim.

The Waleses will be seen in public again at the coronation of King Charles on 6 May at Westminster Abbey. During the ceremony, Prince George will be one of his grandfather’s four pages of honour, which will see him carrying the monarch’s robes. Expect plenty more photographs for the history books next weekend.

For many of us, there’s few things that evoke emotions quite like architecture. A beautifully captured interior can make you wish you lived in a space, inspire you to renovate your own home, redecorate, or even buy another.

Today, Shannon McGrath’s work is a staple in some of our most prestigious home interior design and architectural magazines; with Belle, Vogue, and House and Garden all carrying her imagery of some of the world’s most beautiful interiors.

The foundations

Shannon says she discovered her interest in photography when Earl Carter, the renowned architecture photographer from Melbourne, was photographing her mother’s home.

At the time, she was studying Fine Arts, majoring in ceramics with a focus on architectural subjects. Intrigued that it was possible to have a career in photographing beautiful homes, she decided to do a course at RMIT TAFE.

“I went from not even knowing how to put on an SLR lens in my first class, to finishing the course, to shooting for the Herald Sun display section, and being asked back to teach at the very course that I completed!” she laughs. 

Following this, she completed a two-year apprenticeship with her mentor, Trevor Mein, another noted Melbourne architectural photographer. Eventually, he took her aside and told her she was ready to go out on her own.

Later, some twelve years into her photography career, she went on to complete a Master’s in Fine Arts.

“I started mostly as an architectural photographer, but over time I was booked more and more for interior shoots,” she explains.

“I guess I found an affinity with internal spaces, and the reason they make you feel as they do.”

A day in the life

An interior shoot will typically begin with a phone call from the client, followed by a reconnaissance visit to get a measure of the place, its scale, features, and furniture arrangement. Sometimes Shannon says she will take ‘happy snaps’ to help visualise the final images for a stylist, in the way that an artist does a preparatory drawing before beginning a painting.

“Each project is different, and I approach each one very differently,” she says.

“On a shoot it’s me with my assistant, and mostly I direct the shoot. This is because I want to get the most out of the day for my client. They trust me, but I also welcome the collaborative situation.”

In fact, Shannon believes, the best interior shoots are when there’s co-operation between the designer, the stylist, and the client.

“Often you are in the client’s house, and you must tread lightly or somehow manipulate the image to get what the designer needs without offence to the client,” she says.

And then there’s the weather and how it influences light.

“The weather will determine how I approach a project,” explains Shannon.

“Coming from an architect’s perspective, the client may want shards of light emphasising the architectural components, or from an interior designer’s perspective, soft light to let the design pieces speak.”

When it comes to interiors, the use of light also makes a huge difference to the end result. In many ways Shannon’s work is a study in how the skilful use of ambient light draws out subtleties of shade and tone in a scene.

“You’d be surprised what you can capture with long exposures,” she explains. “When I’m there the whole day, I can see what’s happening with the light to make a calculation about when there will be the light in an area.”

“I never use flash, but occasionally, I use tungsten lighting. I have a little trick where I sometimes expose as much available light as I possibly can, and then I might just give it a little ‘flick’, and that will just give me enough light that’s not too orange or warm that I can balance out with the available light.”

Unlike film, digital makes it easier to manage a mixture of light sources because the auto white balance generally will neutralise most issues within an image, she adds.

Ideal conditions are often in bad weather.

“Some of my best shoots happen when it has been storming outside.”

“I think it gives a beautiful soft ambient vibe, and I don’t like dealing with the hard contrasts of sunlight.  It just highlights the richness in the materials, the fabrics, and all the colours just come through. For external architecture work, yes, you pack up and you go home, but for interiors, bad weather can be ideal.”

A story to every space

To capture the personality and atmosphere of an interior, Shannon says she tries to judge the values and ideas the designer had in mind in creating the interior.

“There is a story to every space,” she says.

“Every residential house shoot on a large scale is an interesting challenge because every interior is unique, with its own values.”

“You also need to decide the important aspects, as usually you cannot shoot everything, and so you need to map what’s important and make sure you get that covered in the time you have.”

“If I find a certain colour or object is pulling my eye, and that is not meant to be the focus of the image, then I’ll take it out, or if I want that to be the focus, then I’ll make sure to frame around it.”

With a chuckle, she says, “I’m a millimetre shifter. I will move a chair a little bit left, a little bit right, a little left. Sometimes I’ll get a couch carried out. I am very hands on!”

The further that you can get back from a large object, the more natural it will appear.

“If I’m dealing with beds, couches, big chairs, and things of that size, I always look for a sense of space, and I put on a longer lens rather than shoot wide. Also, I never allow my camera to be at a high viewpoint because I find that approach more suitable for real estate shots.”

“The only time I will look up,” she explains, “is if I want to point up to an architectural detail on a tall building. All my lenses are shift. I learned on large format four by five-inch cameras, so I do a lot of shift photography, moving and straightening converging lines. I shoot mostly with shift to keep everything straight.”

The evolution of style

Shannon says she directs her shoots intuitively.

“I just let it happen,” she reflects, “without much thought or rather the thought is there, but it’s so much second nature that I’m not conscious of it. I’m into the beauty of the project, and some might say that I shoot in a realistic way without too much trickery in post. I’m not a fan of that.”

“Even today I’m looking to advance my eye, always looking for ways to improve, small things like height of camera, shooting elevation, and shooting opposite to the sun or with the sun.”

The gear

Shannon’s basic kit all fits into one medium-sized Bowens case, and contains a camera and approximately six lenses, a large black collapsible pop up for reflections in art works, and a computer.

“There are two main reasons my gear is limited. The lighting is ambient and available, so there is no need for a lighting kit, and the second is weight,” she explains.

“I don’t like my kit to be heavy and cumbersome, as I don’t like arriving at someone’s house with too much gear. It needs to be easy and simple.”

Today, Shannon is in the enviable position of being able to outsource her post-production to a team who understands her aesthetic.

“They have been working with me for many years,” she says. “I look for people who understand tone, colour, and light, and have a good understanding of shape, and a good understanding of photography.”

All the same, she has never been big on image manipulation.

“I like things to be as natural as they can be, with no trickery. The most important aspect is to get the colours and tones right.” Shannon uses Capture One as her digital editing software program of choice. The process is simple.

“I shoot, create a contact selection sheet which then goes to the client. They select from this, then the files are handled. I check them, and then send them to the client for approval, and it’s away.” 

Forever learning

Shannon believes the key to her success is her desire to never stop learning.

“When I look back at my images from the beginning to where I have come to today, I have learned so much about light and style and I’m forever evolving,” she reflects.

“I think I’ve always had that kind of brain where I’ve been very interested in the technical side of things, and how technique can create an outcome that has emotional impact.

Each time you shoot you will see something different – embrace this.” ❂

You can see more of Shannon’s work here.

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Journeying through misty mountains and deep forestry, photographer Erinthul takes refuge in capturing her dark and cryptic self-portraits that serve as an invitation into folklore and the arcane wildernesses of Poland.

Leaning into vulnerability and imagination while exploring the most fanciful and ghostly characteristics of folklore, the conceptual self-portrait photographer aims to manifest the fantasy elements she holds most dear.

“In my photography, I was inspired mostly by tales from Polish folklore and of course nordic and Celtic mythology (not to mention Lord of the Rings). I was also really inspired by the places I found while hiking and the weather. I love snow, heavy fog, and dancing mists in the Summer. I think that’s why I went into creating more dreamy and sometimes dark photos.” Erinthul says, speaking to PetaPixel.

Beginning her journey in photography in her youth — where she basked in the joy of simply capturing shots of nature, people, and self-portraits — Erinthul spent years away from the medium, only to be reacquainted in college.

“I remember taking ‘artsy’ photos of nature, my friends…the pictures weren’t good at all, but I had a lot of fun taking and editing them. I came back to it when I went to college but my education path was completely opposite to photography or even fine arts. I wanted to go into the military, so I thought that this is my last chance in trying something different…”

Getting lost in her introspection and desiring to escape into her daydreams, the exploration and focus on self-portrait photography felt like a good path to traverse.

“I wanted to create my own little fantasy world where I could escape whenever I wanted some space. That’s when the idea of creating self-portraits came. I like being alone and having a model just wasn’t an option for me. It would be very limiting to wait for someone every time I want to take a photo and in nature, photography time is really important,” she says.

With a softness and depth and using her body as narrative elements, Erinthul’s images highlight an intriguing balance of the feral and the dainty, combined in untamed environments.

“I always liked the contrast of showing a naked and fragile human body in raw, sometimes even dangerous environment,” she tells PetaPixel.

Erinthul explains that her process at times is “chaotic” but yields some of the best results.

“I rarely plan my photoshoots. I just go with the flow most of the time. Some of my favorite photos were unplanned and came as a surprise to me.”

She also shares that traveling for shoots takes hours as she often has to search for areas that spark imagination, inspiration, and curiosity.

“I tend to look for weird or cool trees and rocks, but I also pay a lot of attention to the light because when the light is right even the most boring place looks magical. Lately, I’ve been inspired by the weather conditions. I started using more colors in my photos so I’ve been trying to photograph sunsets and colorful sunrises,” she explains.

Indulging in the spontaneity of stumbled upon “magical” moments, lighting, and the simplistic joy of the craft, she begins her shoots.

“When I find the perfect place I set my camera equipment and I try different poses. I like to show movement […] I take about five to 20 photos from one location and then I move on to the next.”

Over the last two years, the photographer has been utilizing her eye for composition and attuned sense of color to showcase her unique expressions and contribution to the genera, while also acknowledging areas of needed growth.

“I am pretty new to all of this and there’s still a lot of room for a change. I edit some of my photos quite a bit because I love the process of playing with them in Photoshop. […] When I like the edit I feel so fulfilled […] It’s like you almost add a bit of magic to already existing places. Some photos I leave almost untouched tho. It depends on my mood. I don’t always love my edits and when that happens I just leave the photo behind and come back to it months later.”

For as much as Erinthul’s images showcase a seamless bonding with nature and the unknown, these present themselves as challenges for the photographer as well.

“The biggest and obvious challenge in the type of photography I do are people. I can’t always run around naked and I have to constantly focus on my surroundings to not be seen by anyone — mostly to keep me safe and to not force anyone to look at a naked body,” she says. “In addition to that I hate mosquitoes and ticks because in the Summer they can make taking photos a living nightmare.”

As for equipment, she predominantly uses a Canon 6D with 50mm f/1.8 lens and sometimes her 70-200mm /2.8L USM.

“I also have a really basic and cheap tripod and I use an app from Canon that connects my phone to the camera and helps me find the right frame and set a 10 seconds timer every time before taking a photo.”

Desiring to leave viewers with feelings of positivity and wonder, Erinthul also is committed to opposing what she feels is misguided censorship on various social media platforms.

“I would love to show that a naked woman’s body doesn’t always have to be sexualized; it can also be viewed as something natural. Social media these days are censoring every photo with even a little bit of nudity in it. I am not talking about pornography but the natural and soft nudity everyone was born with […] censoring art is an awful thing and instead of putting the effort in writing new bots and algorithms, bring back the human factor (at least to some degree) in reviewing shadowbans,” she says.

“Can you imagine a Renaissance painting with black squares over body parts? That’s just hilarious.”

Erinthul says the feedback on her images have be overwhelmingly positive and encouraging, and is helping her to master her craft in storytelling.

“I get so many useful words of advice and inspiration that it makes me smile every time I am thinking about it. The best kind of comments I get are the ones from people telling me that my photos made them really emotional. That every photo tells a different story on its own and that the nudity in my photos is not sexual at all and my self-portraits made them change their mind on this subject.”

Despite a few errant negative comments about the nudity in her images, Erinthul remains focused on how to best represent the folklore and mythologies she draws inspiration from.

“I love pictures that tell a story. The story doesn’t always have to be clear for the viewer but I like to see that a photographer put some thought into it. Also, it doesn’t have to be perfectly exposed or edited because when it conveys emotions those things are less important.”

As for the future, the city-based photographer is hoping to move to a more secluded spot closer to nature.

“Then I can truly focus on creating more photos and evolve with my photography. I’d also like to travel more, and see different countries because there’s so much beauty outside of Poland.”

For more from Erinthul, make sure to visit her website and Instagram

Image credits: Erinthul

There are people who spend years in school learning the art of working a camera, and then there’s Jordan Jimenez — completely self-taught off his mom’s old Nikon and one photography book for dummies.

Walking around his first gallery opening in January, you could spot 8-by-10 photos from the first time he picked up a camera in June 2015, a few years after he started struggling with depression. Captured on film are memories of him and his friends exploring the streets of San Francisco, where the freelance photographer was born.

“I had no idea what I was doing, how to use it,” he tells TODAY.com, reminiscing about his first camera. “I’d always had fun taking photos on my iPhone with the little fisheye attachment, but that day in 2015 changed everything.”

Before he found his passion for photography, Jimenez’s first love was basketball. He started playing in elementary school and became enamored after attending his first Golden State Warriors game.

“Just like every other kid, I just wanted to go to the NBA, which is, you know, such a silly, silly dream,” Jimenez, who goes by JSquared on social media, says.

Being a part of his local basketball community meant everything to the now 25-year-old. Through basketball, he met his best friends and found an outlet to cope with his depression. So, when Jimenez got injured playing sports in high school, his whole world came crashing down.

That’s when he picked up a camera, which didn’t just change his life — it saved it.

“Photography saved my life”

Jimenez likes to joke that his mental health struggles helped him find his way to photography. “As soon as I picked up the camera, I realized (photography) really does help you see life in such a different way,” he says.

The photographer started struggling with depression as a kid. Growing up in Daly City and San Bruno right outside of San Francisco, he says he felt pressure to be the best at everything, from school to sports.

His teenage years only escalated his mental health struggles. His parents got divorced, his grandma died, and he dealt with a serious concussion that stopped him from playing basketball.

Then, during his senior year of high school, Jimenez started taking pictures. He’d venture to San Francisco, where he and his friends would climb on rooftops to capture different vantage points of the city.

His mom, Lisa Rome, recalls the first time her son asked to borrow her camera. “You can have it. Do whatever you want to do with it. I’m not using it,” she remembers telling him.

The next thing she knew, Jimenez was eagerly showing her the latest collection of photos he’d shot.

“I was trying to find the beauty in life and the beauty in the smallest things. Photography became my new outlet of seeing the world in a positive way,” Jimenez says.

“It was like, how can I show other people what’s beautiful in life? That was my vision with photography, and it’s also my way of giving back and showing people life’s OK, there’s so many beautiful things,” he adds.

Lauren Cook, a clinical psychologist, tells TODAY.com that when we’re passionate about how we spend our time, we experience an elevated level of enthusiasm in our lives that makes us feel excited to start and move thorough our day.

“Passion can be an antidote to so many things that can connect back to depression,” she says. “We can notice increased energy, less fatigue and more motivation — all things that help combat depressive symptoms. We can also see our self-esteem improve because we feel proud of ourselves for living in alignment with our values.”

From the court to the sideline

After graduating from high school, Jimenez attended the University of San Francisco. While in school, he continuously wondered how he could combine his loves of photography and basketball.

A year and a half later, in February 2018, he dropped out of school to pursue photography full time.

“I wanted to cry,” Rome says, remembering when he told her. “But also because of everything he went through, I just wanted him to be happy. He had to take that change. Life is too short.”

To get his foot in the door, Jimenez reached out to old coaches and trainers, asking to photograph practices and workout sessions for free. Every opportunity he could find, Jimenez took it and ran.

“It was all about being in the right place with the right people at the right time,” he says.

In March 2018, after leaving school, he photographed his first big event, McDonald’s All-American Game in Atlanta, an event for top high schools from around the country. There, he created connections with people that led him to photograph his first Euroleague game in Spain a week later, where the young Luka Doncic played for Real Madrid.

The following year, Jimenez met Stephen Curry for the first time while working as a production assistant for a Slam Magazine cover shoot. From there, the two kept building their relationship through run-ins at games photo shoots.

Then, by chance, while at the Unlimited Potential Basketball training facility in Burlingame, California, Jimenez met Jordan Poole, at the time a newly drafted Warriors guard.

The two clicked over their love of basketball and photography, sparking a true friendship that brought Jimenez to the Warrior’s court.

A few years later, in June 2022, Jimenez found himself in the Warriors’ locker room with Curry, Poole and the rest of the team after they’d won the NBA Championships. Thinking back to this moment, Jimenez couldn’t help but recall how surreal it felt.

“I had all of these dreams growing up of wanting to work for the Warriors, but I didn’t know how I would make that happen,” he says.

“To be able to be in a locker room and be able to photograph the championships, the biggest moment of these guys’ lives, it was such a surreal feeling. I play a little bit of a role in telling their story and documenting history,” he adds.

Jimenez recalls a photo he captured of Poole not long after his win. The two were on a boat together in Italy during the summer. While the photo is a simple shot of Poole looking into the camera, Jimenez sees more in the moment.

“For me, it’s such a beautiful moment because, four years ago, people were talking about (how) he wasn’t going to be in the league. Now here we were in Italy … after the championship,” he says.

“It’s all these little moments where nobody might not even understand the context behind it — what the emotions were when I took the photo — but for me, all of these photos are just timestamps of my life,” he adds.

“Capturing the beauty in life”

Jimenez’s perception of a good photo has nothing to do with rules. Instead, it’s all about how a picture makes him feel.

“If I look at it, and I’m like, ‘Damn, that’s a good photo,’ that’s kind of all it is,” he says. “It’s not ever too analytical in the sense of, ‘This is good or bad,’ but it’s like, how did the photo make you … look at the world?”

The photo he gets the most compliments on is a picture of Curry during a game turning around. But his favorite is a lesser-known photograph of a sunset in Maui. While in his eyes, it’s a terrible photo, it’s the memory behind it that holds meaning.

“The photo I have is not that good, but I remember how that moment made me feel, like you really feel like you’re on top of the world,” he says.

“As I get to document those people in places, I’m also documenting all the places and people that I’ve come across and I’ve been lucky enough to experience,” he says.

Photography, especially in the basketball, has also given Jimenez a platform to represent his Filipino culture in spaces where he says not many people look like him.

“It’s also about representation and showing (to) … Filipino people, Asian (people), if I can do it, so can everybody else,” he says.

“If this Filipino kid from the Bay Area … can go ahead and come in and dominate the space in a certain way, then anything’s possible,” he adds.

Looking back, Jimenez isn’t sure where he’d be if he hadn’t picked up a camera and starting shooting. As hard as his journey dealing with depression is, he’s thankful and eager to learn from everyone he encounters.

“Everybody has something to offer,” he says. “As a photographer, I’m always looking for a deeper meaning, observing people’s mannerisms or the way they dress to teach people out their role in the world.”

Of course, Jimenez still has moments where he struggles, but when that happens, he takes extra time practice gratitude and look at the life he’s captured through his lens.

“I don’t think depression really ever fully goes away. But being able to understand how to deal with it is such an important thing,” he says.

Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

For the past 27 years, the annual Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival has extended a web of lens-based art throughout the city of Toronto and beyond. The festival partners with museums, galleries, artist-run centres, and holds an open call for exhibitions, to steep the city in photographic art for the entire month of May. In addition to these gallery exhibitions is a roster of public art projects that take place in outdoor spaces including on billboards, building façades, in gardens, under the expressway, and on the sides of streets, among other unique sites. The festival embraces the multiplicity of forms that is the photographic medium, featuring a robust survey of themes explored via A.I., social media, experimental film, collage, and more.

This year’s Core Program features a number of artists indigenous to Turtle Island, including, among others, the group exhibition Materialized at Critical Distance Centre for Curators; the public art project Grow Up #1 by artist Jake Kimble; and the outdoor installation at Onsite Gallery by photographer Robert Kautuk.

Critical Distance is located in Toronto’s 401 Richmond building–home to numerous galleries and artist-run-centres and considered a cultural hub in the city’s downtown core. In this space dedicated to curatorial inquiry, guest curator Ariel Smith has carefully assembled the exhibition Materialized, featuring works by artists Joi T. Arcand, Catherine Blackburn, Celeste Pedri-Spade, and Nadya Kwandibens. The exhibition delivers on its title, as Smith thoughtfully brings into dialogue works that speak to the tactility and tangibility of photographic objects, highlighting practices incorporating sewing, blanket making, beading, cutting, and photographic dioramas. While the physical gestures the artists use are distinct, one thread that weaves them together is their recontextualization of family photographs.  Reimagining these private images, the artists examine self-identity to unpack personal experiences and the ways they overlap with collective ones. Further, by centering intimate photographs taken by and for Indigenous families and communities, the artists reclaim a medium entrenched in the violence of colonial exploitation, consumption, and settler nation-building.

Anishinabekwe artist Celeste Pedri-Spade works primarily with photography and textiles and has a number of works on view in the exhibition. Ogjchidaakwewag (2016) is a blanket built around a reproduction of a family photograph from the 1960s and includes needlework that points to the topography of the artist’s home territory. Shirley’s Tobacco Bag (2014) brings together photography and beading, featuring a black-and-white beaded portrait on a tanned moose-hide bag. Beading is also a highlight of Catherine Blackburn’s work Scooped (2017), a series of family photos with notable gaps—holes cut out in amorphous shapes where one can assume a missing or lost family member once stood. The edges of the holes have been sutured, so to speak, reparatively outlined with gold beads, illuminating these haunting absences with a touching, mournful gesture.

Joi T. Arcand also makes use of cut outs. In Through that which is scene (2014), the artist placed carefully cut images of family members from her personal photographs and placed them into a dioramic tableau to explore the relationship between memory and family narrative. Nadya Kwandibens’ work extends the exhibition offsite, for an outdoor installation of their image Shiibaashka’igan: Honouring the Sacred Jingle Dress (2019), presented as a street-level billboard at 180 Shaw Street.

A short walk from Critical Distance is the public installation by Jake Kimble, a Chipewyan (Dëne Sųłıné) artist from Treaty 8 Territory in the Northwest Territories, curated by Emmy Lee Wall through a partnership with Vancouver’s Capture Photography Festival. Presented on the north façade of the building at 460 King Street West, Grow Up #1 (2019) is part of the series Grow Up, consisting of portraits of the artist at various ages, with text overlaid. Kimble’s practice is rooted in imagery and text that reveal the humour and absurdity of everyday power dynamics. For #1, the artist foregrounds a childhood image of himself dressed as a cowboy, standing in a kitchen in front of the refrigerator. This image is overlaid with sticker-like, almost three-dimensional-appearing text, placing the young artist behind the words: I was told peace was mine to keep. The juxtaposition further problematizes the violent binary of “cowboys and indians,” and brings to mind the damaging settler-colonial narrative of the “Western” film genre.

East of this site is the mural-sized aerial image Sea Ice Break Up (2019) by Nunavut-based Inuit artist Robert Kautuk, installed across the exterior windows of Onsite Gallery as part of their ongoing program Up Front: Inuit Public Art at Onsite Gallery. Kautuk creates his photographs through drone footage, providing a poetic, vast, and alarming perspective on how quickly the landscape of the north is changing, with an urgency that locals live with and witness every day.

In addition to these exhibitions and public projects is a group show at the Art Gallery of Ontario called We Are Story: The Canada Now Acquisition, and includes work by Raymond Boisjoly, Robert Kautuk, asinnajaq, and Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection is holding a solo exhibition of work by Meryl McMaster entitled Bloodline.

The Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival runs throughout the month of May. Visit scotiabankcontactphoto.com for full details.

IMAGE CAPTIONS

Photo 1: Robert Kautuk, Sea Ice Break Up, 2019. Courtesy of the artist.

Photo 2: Meryl McMaster, The Grass Grows Deep, 2022, from the series ôhkominak âcimowina / Stories of my Grandmothers. Courtesy of the artist, Stephen Bulger Gallery, and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain

Photo 3: Nadya Kwandibens, Shiibaashka’igan: Honouring the Sacred Jingle Dress (2019), Courtesy of the artist.

Photo 4: Celeste Pedri-Spade, Shirley’s Tobacco Bag, 2014 (delica beads, brain-tanned moose hide). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Rebecca Bose

Photo 5: Catherine Blackburn, Scooped (detail), 2017 (photos, 24kt-gold-plated beads, seed beads, thread, 12x9cm). Courtesy of the artist.

Photo 6: Jake Kimble, Grow Up #1, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

Get Revolver‘s new Spring 2023 Issue featuring Metallica on the cover, plus an exclusive print of 72 Seasons-inspired art by acclaimed artist Marald van Haasteren. Only 250 made — order yours now!

Last week, Metallica kicked off the M72 World Tour in support of their new album, 72 Seasons, with two shows at Johan Cruijff Arena in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The trek features “No Repeat Weekend” performances in each city, which meant that fans who attended both shows got to see a completely different set each night.

One of those attendees was famed rock photographer Ross Halfin, who snapped epic shots at the two concerts. See some of his standout pics below.

Night One, April 27th:

Night Two, April 29th: