The Vancouver School of conceptual or post-conceptual photography (often referred to as photoconceptualism ) is a loose term applied to a grouping of artists from Vancouver starting in the 1980s. Critics and curators began writing about artists reacting to both older conceptual art practices and mass media by countering with "photographs of high intensity and complex content that probed, obliquely or directly, the social force of imagery." No formal " school " exists and the grouping remains both informal and often controversial even amongst the artists themselves, who often resist the term. Artists associated with the term include Vikky Alexander , Roy Arden , Ken Lum , Jeff Wall , Ian Wallace , Stan Douglas and Rodney Graham .
11-543: In the early 1980s an attempt at what William Wood refers to as a "re-branding" of Vancouver and a desire for a larger recognition within Canada and internationally, the Vancouver School designation functioned to present Vancouver art to the larger international market. Jeff Wall's Mimic (1982) typifies his cinematographic style and according to art historian Michael Fried "characteristic of Wall's engagement in his art of
22-447: A dormitory room on a rainy day off from their blue-collar jobs. The conversation flares up during a discussion of the day's horse races, and the 6-minute filmed loop is repeated from different angles on a split screen, each cycle presenting ever-changing configurations of point of view. The takes are edited together in real time by a computer during the exhibition, generating an almost endless series of montages. In 1994 Rodney Graham began
33-554: A scene that he once witnessed of racial prejudice. The picture is held at the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, in Toronto . Wall, after his previous studio work, decided to take pictures in the street, in 1982. These pictures, like his former works, would be staged, with actors. He took inspiration from an incident that he had witnessed, while walking on a street of Vancouver , of racial abuse, and decided to recreate it in
44-430: A series of films and videos in which he himself appears as the principal character: Halcion Sleep (1994), Vexation Island (1997) (shown at Canadian pavilion of the 1997 Venice Biennale ) and How I Became a Ramblin’ Man (1999). The Phonokinetoscope (2002) reflects Graham’s engagement both with the origins of cinema and its eventual demise. Graham takes up a prototype by Thomas Edison and puts forward an argument for
55-416: A staged photograph. Wall described this picture as a way of trying "to bring street photography and ‘cinematography’ together.” While he took inspiration of street photography by artists like Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand , he created something original, what he called “cinematographic photographs”. The scene depicts an Asian man, well dressed, walking in the left of a sidewalk, while a couple walks to
66-540: Is actually a recreation of an exchange witnessed by the artist. Stan Douglas' 1998 video installation Win, Place or Show is shot in the style of the late-1960s CBC drama The Client , noted for its gritty style, long takes and lack of establishing shots . Set in 1950s Vancouver in the Strathcona redevelopment, the installation explores the modernist notion of urban renewal with the demolition of existing architecture in favour of grids of apartment blocks. Two men share
77-452: Is casual but well-dressed in comparison, in a collared shirt and slacks. As the couple overtake the man, the boyfriend makes an ambiguous but apparently obscene and racist gesture, holding his upraised middle finger close to the corner of his eye, "slanting" his eye in mockery of the Asian man's eyes. The picture resembles a candid shot that captures the moment and its implicit social tensions, but
88-408: The 1980s with social issues". A 198 × 226 cm. colour transparency, it shows a white couple and an Asian man walking towards the camera. The sidewalk, flanked by parked cars and residential and light-industrial buildings, suggests a North American industrial suburb. The woman is wearing red shorts and a white top displaying her midriff; her bearded, unkempt boyfriend wears a denim vest. The Asian man
99-480: The history of photography, there are also strong ties to the history of painting in the way that he approaches photography. Pieces like Mimic are meant to be hung on the wall like a painting, and not stored in an album or looked at solely as plates in a book. The sheer size and luminosity of the lightboxes makes sure that one cannot ever get the full effect of Wall’s art from a reproduction." David Campany writes that " Mimic can be read in several ways: photography as
110-404: The relation between sound and image in film. In Rheinmetall/Victoria 8 (2003), two increasingly obsolete technologies, the typewriter and film projector, face off against one another—with the latter projecting a film of the former. Mimic (photograph) Mimic is a color photograph created by Canadian photographer Jeff Wall , in 1982. It is a staged photograph that tries to recreate
121-416: The right. The bearded man, dressed in a more casual way, stares at him, while pointing to his own eyes, making an offensive racial gesture of slanted eyes, in reference to the Asian man ethnicity. The woman, dressed in red shorts, who is walking while holding the man's hand, possibly her husband, doesn't seems to be paying any attention to the scene. Graham W. Bell states: "Along with broader references to
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