Photog Discovery of the Week

This is a special month in Toronto. The Contact photo festival runs throughout the month of May and many galleries are exhibiting some wonderful images. In addition, several public spaces, including Pearson Airport, the concrete supports of the Gardiner Expressway and the Brookfield (formerly BCE) Place are featuring photo art.

I was wandering down Queen Street West on the look-out for photo exhibits when I discovered a new gallery, The Lausberg Contemporary, showing works by David Burdeny. The show is called Horizons and it consists of stunning, stark landscapes largely from Greenland and Antarctica. The works are mainly panoramas, but the quality of light is absolutely eerie. There is an amazing sense of stillness and grandeur about these works that I've not seen before in images of the Antarctic (a destination that has become a bit of a fad lately).



According to the exhibit blurb, David Burdeny has used long and repeated exposures to achieve the effects he displays in his images. No matter how he does it, the compositions are superb and the mood that he conveys is bittersweet, with beauty and peace overlaid with brooding and foreboding. The small thumbnail doesn't quite do justice to these large works, but you can sort of get an idea of the quality of these images.

If you are in the Toronto area, I would encourage you to get out this month and soak up the Contact exhibits.