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Capture Photography Fest builds on Vancouver history with Hot Properties and more
The year’s Festival will feature 100 free exhibitions, public art projects, and events that are open to the public at 50 participating galleries: all of which aim to increase awareness of the cultural importance of photography in all of its forms.
Hot Properties, part of The Capture Photography Festival. Photo by Jim Breukelman.
The Capture Photography Festival will return to Metro Vancouver this April, for the third year in a row, celebrating lens based creative content.
The annual not-for-profit Festival is the largest in Western Canadian and first of its kind in British Columbia. The year’s Festival will feature 100 free exhibitions, public art projects, and events that are open to the public at 50 participating galleries: all of which aim to increase awareness of the cultural importance of photography in all of its forms.
“Our goal is to build on Vancouver’s rich history in lens based art by offering a program of new works that are accessible to everyone…by highlighting new artists and new ways of thinking about photography we hope to foster creativity and professional development within the photographic art community,” says Capture Executive Director, Kim Spencer-Nairn.
The Canada Line Project: City Centre Station. Art by Adad Hannah.
Capture has developed programming designed to actively engage with audiences and a large part of that is the public art component of the Festival. At the press preview last month, four installations were highlighted and are sure to be not only crowd pleasers, but also start a dialogue.
The Canada Line Project consists of nine separate exhibition spaces connected under the theme “Lying Stills: constructing truth with photography” – investigating how photographers create a narrative in their work through the use of space. The artworks will be on the exteriors of Canada Line stations.
Based off a series of images artist Jim Breukelman captured in the 1980s, Hot Properties will feature quirky Vancouver homes built in the 1930s and 1940s across 10 billboards throughout the city.
Originally the series captured these homes as they were slowly vanishing in areas of redevelopment. Today, with the increasing rapid development and the housing crisis these photographs serve as a reminder of what once was an affordable middle-class home and how heritage has been lost amidst trends of gentrification and displacement.
Hot Properties. Photo by Jim Breukelman
Next, the BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation project makes use of the façade of the building, showcasing the integration of art and technology on Burrard Street, drawing on the buildings history itself through work of photographer Steven Waddell.
Finally, Viewpoint is a two-part project situated in North Vancouver’s Lonsdale Quay. Vancouver artist Erin Siddall’s Burrard Inlet Big Camera transforms a shipping container into a site-specific camera obscura, which visitors can enter.
A second container will be converted into an exhibition space and curated by Vancouver-based Cate Rimmer: the two containers will be stacked on top of one another, with the camera accessible by stairs from the ground up, in a style that mirrors the containers’ functional role as trade vessels.
Rimmer’s exhibit will provide a backdrop of photographic practices that examine ways of seeing the sea and trade routes in Vancouver’s port.
Inclusivity and interaction seems to be at the root of the festival, which is evidenced by the public art and also the partnerships it creates with galleries and photography stores within the city during the Festival. A prime explain is “Project Instant” curated by Beau Photo Supplies.
They are running a submission contest for all forms of instant photography, including Polaroid, Impossible Project, Fuji Instant and any other instant film. Entry fee is $15.75 and you can submit up to 3 different photographs.
At least one image from every submission will be displayed at Science World and Telus World of Science from March 30th until April 26th during the Festival. Free opening reception will be April 6th from 6-8pm.
Visit beauphoto.blogspot.ca for more details.
The public art installations are just the tip of the iceberg; a full detailed calendar of programming will be available on capturephotofest.com mid-March, while the Festival gets underway April 1st.
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