Robert Bourdeau, Industrial Sites: United States and Europe (1990-1998)
Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto
September 24 - October 24, 1998
Sixty-seven-year-old Robert Bourdeau, Canada's premier contemporary photographer whose professional career dates back 30 years, is internationally debut a large body of black and white photographs of inactive and abandoned industrial sites at the Jane Corkin Gallery in Toronto.
Jane Corkin Gallery will also bring the show, Robert Bourdeau to Paris Photo, one of the world's leading photography fairs, from November 20-23, 1998.
Taken during the past eight years throughout the United States, and most recently in rural France, Luxembourg and Germany, the series of photographs reconfirms the artist as a master of light, form and texture with his prints of architecture and landscape. As an architect who preferred to focus on large-format photography, he understands both his subject and his art like few others.
"Robert is historically significant as he honed his craft with photographic-guru Minor White beginning in 1959, and is a living artistic link to his more famous predecessor Paul Strand," says his dealer Jane Corkin, a pioneer and 20-year veteran of the sale of photography as fine art. "Like these masters, he has advanced the traditional landscape aesthetic by rejecting pictorialism to more importantly express universal emotion and meaning. His luminous images rely on precision, clarity and geometry that allow his inner spirituality to be conveyed through his subjects."
Following an annual routine of traveling in the summer to remote sites worldwide that feature both architecture and nature to make his photographs, and then printing them during the winter, Robert Bourdeau's subjects range from rain forests in Costa Rica to ancient Buddhist ruins in Sri Lanka. The new series includes landscapes and structures of coal mines, textile mills, quarries, grain elevators and steel plants.
"These industrial sites are places that possess a power in which I feel vulnerable, with a sense of ominous stillness and qualities that transcend the specificity of time," says Robert Bourdeau. "They are in a state of transition, transformation and possible transcendence where order and chaos are in perpetual altercation. I must emphasize that the series is not a documentary, but a photographic and inner quest."
Another important element of Robert Bourdeau's work is its ambiguity of foreground and background, made possible by the viewer's tendency to first focus on both the rich and subtle tonalities of the prints - always a combination of soft grays, pearlescent whites, and velvety blacks - rather than the entire subject. In his prints, nothing is out of focus as the original image would be viewed by human eyes. As such, subjects at different distances appear to merge and flatten.
Robert Bourdeau photographs with a large-format view camera on a tripod - a Kodak Master View. In printing, sometimes he makes a contact print by placing a negative, as large as 11 by 14 inches, directly on the paper, and sometimes he slightly enlarges an 8 by 10 inch negative. Waiting for the right moment to photograph once he has selected his image, he may spend hours before releasing the shutter - often at sunrise or sunset.
"Bourdeau is concerned with peeling back the surface to reveal the geometries of nature," says James Borcoman, curator emeritus of photographs at The National Gallery of Canada. "Ultimately, Bourdeau is searching for the landscape beyond the landscape, reaching for intimations of cosmic mysteries."
Robert Bourdeau himself remembers a comment that Minor White expressed to him in 1968 that also applies to his work, "If we can't expose our film, we'll expose our hearts."
Exclusively represented by Jane Corkin Gallery since 1980, Robert Bourdeau has also exhibited his work in significant solo shows: The Canadian Embassy in Tokyo (1997); The Painting School of Montmiral in Castelnau de Montmiral, France (1991); The National Gallery of Canada (1989-90); Winnepeg Art Gallery (1988-90 travelling exhibition); Art Gallery of Ontario (1981); International Center of Photography in New York (1980); and the National Film Board's Photo Gallery in Ottawa (1979). His work is also in the permanent collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art and The Renaissance Society in Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; National Gallery of Canada; and Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottawa, among others.
Aside from a monograph, Robert Bourdeau (Mintmark Press, 1980), the artist's work is feature in other books including Children in Photography, 150 Years (Jane Corkin/G.M. Dault, 1990), Photographs: 150 Years (Jane Corkin Gallery, 1989), 12 Canadians, Contemporary Canadian Photography (McClelland & Stewart, 1980), The Photographers Choice (Addison, 1976).
After studying architecture at the University of Toronto, Robert Bourdeau's subsequent resolve to devote himself to a purely meditative photography was strengthened by his friendships with Minor White and Paul Strand, both of whom he acknowledges as profound influences on his artistic direction. Robert Bourdeau resides in Ottawa, the nation's capital; he was born in Kingston, Ontario, in 1931.
The Bourdeau exhibition at Jane Corkin Gallery - which begins to celebrate this fall its twentieth anniversary as a gallery devoted to photography - may be previewed during the Toronto International Film Festival by special arrangement.
JANE CORKIN GALLERY
179 John Street, Toronto, ON, M5T 1X4
www.janecorkin.com
