Extended Portraits (1986)

This project questions the authenticity and veracity of conventional photography – more precisely, the environmental portrait. The inclusion of the signifiers of the support and flatness of the image (the perforations and fabrication data found outside the confines of the standard picture area on 35mm film) on the same surface of the subject who is photographed using the seductive illusion of tridimensionality, invites the spectator to question, in a playful way, the presumed dichotomy between the form and content; a dichotomy on which a significant portion of photography criticism is based. When the spectator considers each portrait, presumably to learn more about the subject, they are instead drawn into the photograph as object and photography itself as subject – but they learn nothing about the sitter. Thus, Extended Portraits presented a photographic world that is so self-referential as to become vertiginous.

Solo (or duo) shows:

1990 Galerie Photo-Vidéo l’espace f, Rimouski , Québec

1989 Nova Scotia Photo Co-op, Halifax

1988 Extended Portraits & The Mission of Photography…, Axe Neo-7, Hull, Québec
Center Eye Gallery, Calgary
Galerie Séquence, Jonquière, Québec
Centre VU, Québec

1986 Galerie Bourget, Montréal

Group shows:

1989 Canadian Photographers, HNF Gallery, Budapest and Bànyàszati Muzeum, Sopron, Hungary

1986 Photoperspectives ’86, Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver

Extended Portraits is a series of 20 C-prints, each measuring 100 x 30.5 cm / 39½ x 12 inches. Each is adhered to the wall by black pushpins with a space of roughly 2.5 cm /1 inch between prints.

The exhibition prints are rolled in a cardboard tube and the complete exhibition is shipped in a reinforced cardboard box measuring 54.5 x 14.5 x 14 cm x 2.5 kg / 21½ x 5¾ x 5½ inches x 5½ lbs.

Please contact the artist.