Michael Edwards

Browsing through online records of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s exhibitions from the past decade or so, I came across this print from Lorraine Gilbert (above).

For me, what’s striking about the photo is the contradictory subtleness as well as the vibrancy and darkness of the palette. I feel as though there’s a certain quality, like something akin to a sort of ‘magic realism,’ at play in the apparently empty (maybe even ghostly) street scene.

It’s an image I’m fond of and keep coming back to, for these reasons and many inexplicable others. Does the term ‘sublime’ work here? I think it probably can.

The blurb for the exhibition offers this: “Site Unseen reveals artists’ fascination with the camera’s ability to describe the world, while recognizing the play between reality and artifice[,] … ultimately questioning the idea of a photograph as a factual record.” The Vancouver Art Gallery’s record of the exhibition here.