Campbell House and Composites

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Robert
Notman Composite

Notman Composite

NEXT TORONTO MEETING: Wed, May 27, 2015.
Sarah Parsons on Notman’s Composite Photographs

**IMPORTANT**
**THIS MEETING ONLY  WE WILL MEET**
**AT CAMPBELL HOUSE ON THE 4th WEDNESDAY**
**QUEEN ST AND UNIVERSITY AVE**
** BEGINNING AT 6:00 PM**

The month of May is CONTACT in Toronto and we celebrated this photographic event by providing post-graduate students from the University of Toronto with composite photos from the personal collections of selected PHSC members. Dr Parsons of York University in Toronto will give a talk on the Notman Images. Campbell House will host the exhibit as well as our May meeting.

The public is welcome.

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New PHSC Executive as of May 1, 2015

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Robert

-259125133584E9400 2Toronto. The PHSC held its annual business meeting on April 15, 2015. Clint Hryhorijiw spoke on behalf of the current executive to recap its accomplishments over the past two years and announced the new executive to take effect in two weeks on May 1, 2015. The members of the new executive will function for two years until April 30, 2017.

Member Ed Warner captured the photograph at left while editor Robert Lansdale was taking the official photograph of the new executive. Continue reading →

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More Real than Reality exhibit now on Facebook

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Robert

SafariToronto. The U of T students who mounted the Campbell House exhibit of composite photographs using examples from the collections of PHSC members have set up a Facebook page to promote their exhibit and this year’s CONTACT which runs the month of May.

Please join Kaitlin and Shelsie in celebrating CONTACT this coming May by visiting their Facebook page and beautiful exhibit at Campbell House. The students involved have shown a tremendous amount of enthusiasm in collaborating with our executive and the staff of Campbell house to ensure this exhibition is as well received as last year’s very successful exhibit of stereo images.

Show your support by visiting and Liking the Facebook page the girls have activated this past week. Clicking on the above icon will take you to their page.

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Michael Mitchell and AGO’s Lodz exhibit

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Robert

20091130-143348-H3LNEXT TORONTO MEETING: Wed, April 15th, 2015
Michael Mitchell has spoken to the PHSC a couple of times before. This event co-incides with the Lodz exhibit of the Henryk Ross photographs of a Polish Ghetto in the early years of World War 2.

Michael wrote several AGO exhibition catalogues and contributed to the book published concurrently with the Lodz exhibit. Come out and hear this interesting speaker talking of his latest experiences with the Lodz exhibit.

For more information, read the latest PHSC newsletter 14-11 – Robert Lansdale has written an article on the exhibit (see 14-11, page 5).

The public is welcome.  Go to our Programs page for times and directions.

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CN Tower is 40 years old this year

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Robert
Construction of the CN Tower antenna complex

Construction of the CN Tower antenna complex

Toronto. I lived in Montreal in the early 1970s. Every three months I drove to Toronto visiting relatives and at journey’s end, I would pass the CN Tower construction site, thinking this would make a great photo essay – like Peter Stackpole’s Leica essay on construction of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge to Oakland in the 1930s.

I never captured the tower’s progress, but others did and one enterprising individual has posted those images on Flickr complete with a well researched and detailed story for each photograph.

PC journal editor Robert Lansdale’s son and namesake has finished his Flickr page on the building of the CN Tower after three years of intensive interviews and research. Robert Jr has posted photos taken by members of the construction crews on a Flickr page aptly titled CN Tower’s 40th Anniversary – Start of Construction. Each photo is accompanied by text. Click on each picture and scroll down to read the text accompanying the photograph. (Hopefully, Robert Jr will combine the text and photographs in a book at some point.)

Visit the site and share the beginnings of this historic Toronto landmark. Today, no matter where you live in the city, the tower guides you to the downtown area.

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Newsletter 14-11

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Robert

stamp-14-11Toronto. Editor David Bridge serves up another sumptuous edition of our newsletter. He begins with our April speaker, Michael Mitchell, who is a freelance photographer and documentarian followed by our 3rd Image Show just a few days later. Next are a report of the March movie night featuring rare work by old Seneca students including our president and audio-video expert Mark Singer and the Image Show poster with full details.

CONTACT is next and once again U of T students mount an historic featured exhibit  of PHSC member images at Campbell House. David follows this with a report by Robert Lansdale on the Lodz Ghetto photographs of Henryk Ross at the AGO. Editor emeritus Terry Wedge offers an illustrated article onNiagara Falls Selfies followed by a picture essay of the March 2015 PHSC auction. David wraps up this colourful edition with a number of small items and various columns like Louise Freyburger’s popular Photo Links column. Click here or on the stamps icon (see page 9 of newsletter 14-11 for a live link) at left to read and print  this latest edition.

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More Real than Reality: The Art of Canadian Composite Photography 1870-1930

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Robert

CONTACT2015Toronto. The PHSC is delighted to be a Featured Exhibitor at this year’s CONTACT festival. The show More Real than Reality will be shown at Campbell House, which is centrally located at Queen and University in Toronto.  This year’s exhibition features photographs from member collections and is mounted by a triumvirate of post graduate students: Kaitlin Normandin, Shelsie Tunks and Danielle Varadi-Stayer.

In the late 1800s, photography was agonizingly slow making multi-people portraits difficult to take, even outdoors. Notman and others resorted to taking individual photographs and carefully assembling the resized cutouts to make the composite assembly ready to be re photographed.  This exhibition shows just how well the photographers of the day over-came the limits of their craft.

The public is welcome to visit Campbell House and the exhibit any time during May 1 to 31 when CONTACT is hosted at many locations in Toronto. Click the icon at left or here for more details on CONTACT 2015, Campbell House, and the PHSC exhibition.

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PHOTOGRAPHY HISTORIANS: A NEW GENERATION?

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Robert
October 1948 gelatine silver print of U of C class. Black Star Collection, Ryerson.

October 1948 gelatine silver print of U of C class. Black Star Collection, Ryerson.

Ryerson Image Centre Symposium
March 26 – 28
School of Image Arts
Ryerson University
122 Bond St, Toronto

Ryerson presents its fourth symposium on photography. Click here for a description of the topics and speakers. The speakers are well known and a few have spoken at the PHSC meetings on other topics. We are delighted to have such a great symposium here in downtown Toronto – and the limited seating is free on a first come first serve basis. This pdf file gives further details including speaker biographies and a precis of each talk.

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An Early History of IMAX

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Robert
An early IMAX movie mechanism

An early IMAX movie mechanism

Toronto. Back in the days when the inventors of Imax were developing a film for Ontario Place and before any first run theatres played Imax or before it became a means for first run movies, a small group of Seneca College film students decided to interview and record the creators of Imax and its objectives.

The sound man on the project was our very own president. Mark Singer. Mark projected one of handful of copies of the movie his class at Seneca put together decades ago. The film is interspersed with 16mm clips courtesy of IMAX. These clips went on to promote IMAX and today IMAX is used to show many first run movies as well as specials created specifically to take advantage of IMAX. This is one of the movies Mark showed tonight at the March 18, 2015 Movie Night. Hats off to Mark for this nifty interview of the folks who made IMAX a reality. N.B. even today Mark is our very talented audio-video expert.

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Next Toronto Meeting is a Movie Night

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Robert

20050529-013731-Montreal projector_0086NEXT TORONTO MEETING: Wed, March 18, 2015.
Every third Wednesday except for July and August in the summer, we hold a meeting in Toronto beginning at 7:30pm with members offering and exchanging items from their collection.

At 8:00pm we begin our formal meeting, often with a special speaker or occasionally with a movie. There is good fun for all so come on out and meet other photographers and collectors and see a great movie or listen to our speaker discuss a topic of interest to all collectors.

Thus week we will have  movie night courtesy of our president Mark Singer.

The public is welcome. Go to our Programs page for times and directions.

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