Canadian Photography

“Broken Ground” is an exhibition which brings an overview of Canadian photography to Europe. The exhibition shows historical pictures from the Canadian National Archive together with contemporary works of six well-known Canadian artists: Serge Clement, Rafael Goldchain, Thaddeus Holownia, David Hlynsky, Brenda Pelkey and Andrew Danson.

The exhibition examines different photographic styles of capturing landscapes and people. The selection of 88 photographs was made to satisfy the curiosity of the viewers about Canada as a large, sparsely populated country. The thematic structure of the exhibition presents Canada as an endless, culturally homogeneous block of land, while at the same time questioning this premise.

Canada and particularly Canadian photography are scarcely known here in Europe, while US American culture is more familiar. “Broken Ground” shows connections between historical and contemporary Canadian photography.

The central theme of the exhibition “Broken Ground”, which consists of the country and its people, is simple: the historical photographs from 1858 up to the early 20th century reflect the conventional and perhaps romantic views of Canada as an endless countryside populated by the proverbial “noble savages” and white settlers.

The “noble savage” is a familiar historical notion based on a “conflicting and contradictory European tradition of dealing with whatever is alien and different,” namely “to idealize the natives on the one hand, while branding them as depraved savages on the other.”

The contemporary photographs exhibited by the six established Canadian photographers Serge Clément, Rafael Goldchain, Thaddeus Holownia, David Hlynsky, Brenda Pelkey and Andrew Danson attempt to challenge the views described above. They have made photographs in Canada during the last twenty years and attempted to overcome the conventional views of the country and its people.

In a way the pictures are time capsules which reveal both evident subject matter and hidden themes. On the other hand, they deal with the indescribable magic of chance and contradiction. Within the concept of “Broken Ground” are silent references to the land and its people and in some cases to the urban environment, all of which is challenged by the catastrophic and complete dominance of Man over our planet.

The differences in the works of the six photographers demonstrate the intimate knowledge of their topics which each of them has achieved in a changing world in which people in North America and elsewhere create a rather altered zeitgeist through stress, environmental pollution and a surfeit of information – while others sleep. “Broken Ground” is also a straightforward metaphor for the sanctity of the Earth and perhaps mankind as well. We cannot return to the past, yet can we look back into the future?

In fact, the exhibition informs the hope of getting the viewers a bit into the right frame of mind for inevitable changes.