Working Photographs / Popular Personal Collective

Susan MacEachern and Robert Bean have collaborated to organize an exhibition of contemporary photographic works. Featured in the exhibition will be the work of Halifax artist, Helen Sinclair; Toronto artists Carol Conde and Karl Beveridge and, as well, a video tape from the Concerned Farmwomen organization of Dobbington, Ontario. The show will demonstrate how artists and others employ photography to represent current social themes. The curators state: “We feel that this exhibition will exemplify the many forms that photography has in the culture and the way it is used as a medium to influence and form peoples’ opinions through artistic and journalistic means.” Helen Sinclair’s autobiographical imagery retains a sense of intimacy and personal narrative while illustrating the complex economics of housework and mothering. Conde and Beveridge’s photographs are, visually, highly sophisticated. Constructed like stills from a movie or theatre performance they give life to an oral account of activities taken from the annals of Canadian labour history. The video tape from Concerned Farmwomen is essentially documentary in form.