Contact Photography Festival – contributed by Bill Woodley

Club members Tom Schatzky and I visited the Contact Photography Festival in Toronto last week. It is quite a show – 180 mostly free exhibitions plus public lectures, auctions and other events during the month of May – and quite a challenge to choose what to see. Many of the shows are unjuried, with wildly different subjects and uneven quality, but overall I found them more interesting than those we saw on a similar trip last year.
In the 3 days we had, we were able to see about 40 exhibitions and 2 lectures by Magnum
photographers, without rushing around too much. We did not see two marquee exhibitions at the ROM and AGO, and several I would have liked to see – like Berenice Abbott – had not opened yet. If you are going to Toronto or considering a visit in the next few weeks, let us know as we brought back a couple of extra copies of the Catalogue which we would be glad to share. You can also follow Contact on line at: http://scotiabankcontactphoto.com/