Group Portrait with art scene
"Group Portrait with art scene," by Richard Rhodes, Winter 2007, p. 18
When the time came to start work on this Toronto issue, we wanted to follow the formats that we used with previous issues devoted to Calgary and Montreal. (The first art-scene issue, in 2001, had been about Vancouver and followed a different model, with the artist Ken Lum as guest editor.) This meant finding a photographer who could bring a sympathetic sensibility to the portrait photos that we use to show key scene people and complement the other editorial stories focusing on the art. It wasn’t a hard choice in picking George Whiteside, the noted Toronto fashion and editorial photographer. Whiteside has roots in the local art scene that date back to the late 1970s: first as an artist, then as a professional who has maintained close ties with the city’s art and artists. The hard part was giving him a shooting list. The scene is too big and changeable to reduce to a top-ten list. (That’s for other publications.) The Toronto art scene’s character lies in its shifting density. Solo portraits wouldn’t do; we needed group portraits. Even then, the shots begged rethinking; every list could have been longer. In the end, the availability of people added some closure and highlighted that the Toronto scene is increasingly a travelling scene, with artists on the move to take up residencies in London, New York and Berlin. Part of this has to do with finding opportunity. It is no secret that many artists feel that success elsewhere is now a prerequisite for being taken seriously at home. This alienating precept adds a raw edge to the workings of art institutions and media. Toronto’s cultural mindset is smart and informed, but skeptical of its achievements. This shadow, the result of a lingering colonial heritage, makes an ever-rougher fit with what’s in place.
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