Stories from the Picture Press: Black Star Publishing Co. & The Canadian Press (opening night), September 2023 © Kenya-Jade Pinto, The Image Centre

Curator-led Tours of Stories from the Picture Press at The Image Centre

Join us for two special exhibition tours of Stories from the Picture Press: Black Star Publishing Co. & The Canadian Press, on view now at The Image Centre. Alongside the curators of the exhibition, explore stories about historic events and personalities, while learning how photojournalists and press agencies worked together to document the news and distribute images for publication throughout the 20th century.

Wednesday, November 15, 2023 | 6 pm
Led by co-curators Paul Roth and Rachel Verbin

Wednesday, November 29, 2023 | 6 pm
Led by co-curators Gaëlle Morel and Rachel Verbin

Free, and no registration required.

About the Exhibition
Featuring more than thirty-five stories about historic events and personalities, this exhibition explores the important role of photo agencies during the heyday of print photojournalism. Drawing from The Image Centre’s famous Black Star press photography collection as well as the archive of Canada’s national news agency, The Canadian Press, the selection spans the twentieth century—from the British movement for women’s right to vote, through the Watts riots in Los Angeles, to the Oka Crisis in Quebec. Each story illuminates a different aspect of how photojournalists have worked to document the news and distribute their photographs for publication.

Stories from the Picture Press: Black Star Publishing Co. & The Canadian Press (opening night), September 2023 © Kenya-Jade Pinto, The Image Centre

Also on view — now through December 9, 2023

Louie Palu: Cage Call
Between 1991 and 2003, Canadian documentary photographer Louie Palu established himself in the mining communities of Northeastern Ontario and Northwestern Quebec. Over time he accumulated an extensive, in-depth body of work that reveals the living and working conditions of the miners, while also capturing the formidable industrial architecture of the pits. Cage Call gathers together more than fifty black-and-white photographs and ephemera from Palu’s visual archive of this central but often overlooked and misunderstood aspect of Canada’s industrial culture.

Su Rynard: As Soon As Weather Will Permit
Artist Su Rynard’s correspondence with her uncle, Vernon Rowley, inspired As Soon As Weather Will Permit—the haunting and disquieting story of one soldier’s participation in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. This two-channel video combines their verbal and written exchanges with family archives, historical footage evoking nuclear warfare, and stark landscapes of the Utah airfield and bombing range where Air Force radar operator Rowley trained for the atomic mission by the US government. Threading these disparate audiovisual elements together, Rynard reconciles one person’s conflicted recollection with the collective memory of a dramatic and violent historic event.

Hannah Somers: The Music Sang ‘Lean on Me’
In her exhibition The Music Sang ‘Lean on Me’ Hannah Somers investigates her own identity by returning to her roots, creating visual conversations between her mother and aunt, biracial twin sisters adopted into a white family in the 1960s. The photographs and video featured in the exhibition recount the circumstances of the sisters’ upbringing and its effect on their racial and social identities. The imagery probes their role models, and depicts their relationship with one another through discussion and gesture. Raised within a predominantly white community, the sisters’ were aware of everyone’s eyes upon them and the stereotypes that clung to their Black individuality. Through lighthearted conversation they recount growing up with no familial connection to their heritage or the Black community. In response, they idolized and felt connected with figures in popular culture and the media.

The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University, 2023 © LF Documentation, The Image Centre

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Admission is always free

Gallery Hours
Sunday–Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday: 12–8 pm
Thursday–Saturday: 12–6 pm

Exhibition Tours
Tuesday: By appointment
Wednesday–Friday: Drop-in, 1:30 pm

The Image Centre is wheelchair accessible. Please contact us if we can make any accommodations to ensure your inclusion in our exhibitions and events.