Stories told in the photographs

Much can be said about the significance of What Matters Most: Photographs of Black Life at the AGO, especially when speaking of the role photography can and has had in shaping Black identities and visual culture throughout time. Two more voices are set to add to the conversation with a free event open to all AGO visitors on Saturday, November 5. Evelyn Auchinvole and Sheila Murray became instant friends when they met each other at a talk about What Matters Most featuring the co-curators of the exhibition, Zun Lee and Sophie Hackett. The two were drawn to the over 500 photographs of everyday Black life, finding endless parallels in their lived experiences and work.

For 12 years, Auchinvole has sought to preserve a legacy centuries old through a small but growing, community archive of photographs, drawings and other ephemera at Stewart Memorial Church in Hamilton, Ontario. Established as St. Paul's African Methodist Episcopalian Church with Josiah Henson as its first pastor, it has long since been a stronghold in Hamilton’s Black community since the 1830s as one of Canada’s oldest Black congregations.

Murray brings her perspective as an author whose novel Finding Edward has been shortlisted for the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. The book tells the coming-of-age story of Cyril Rowntree who, through photographs and letters from the 1920s, begins to uncover the story of a mixed-race young man named Edward and Canadian Black history.

Leading up to their talk on Saturday, we connected with Auchinvole and Murray at Stewart Memorial Church to learn more about their thoughts about What Matters Most, the church’s community archive and Murray’s book Finding Edward. 

The following conversation has been edited for length.

AGOinsider: Can you introduce yourselves and the work you do?

Auchinvole: I'm Evelyn, ‘Evie’, Auchinvole. I'm a member of Stewart Memorial Church and I've been involved with the church since my childhood. Over the years, I’ve become very interested in the Black history of Hamilton, as it relates to the church's participation in life in Hamilton, and in the political well-being of Black people in Hamilton.

Murray: I'm Sheila Murray. My involvement in this talk is because of my novel, Finding Edward, which looks at aspects of Black history. I was born and raised in England. When I came to Canada, I lived for the most part in Toronto, but moved to Hamilton five years ago. Since I've been in Hamilton, I've learned a lot more about the wealth of Black history and the importance of the Black population here. I'm very glad to be living here, particularly since the publication of my novel which is now getting some attention. It’s more than nice to be taken in by the Hamilton community.

Evelyn Auchinvole standing in front of Stewart Memorial Church. Image courtesy of Cathie Coward. 

AGOinsider: You met each other at the AGO through this exhibition. Tell us more about that meeting.

Auchinvole: I had the delight of meeting Sheila about four weeks ago, and it was an instant friendship.

We met at this beautiful discussion [led by curators Zun Lee and Sophie Hackett] around the exhibition, how it came together, and the essays in the book. We sat together and understood each other right away. After that, Sheila and I went down to see the exhibition again. We wanted to immerse ourselves in what it was all about and how it was making us feel. At the same time, I was reading Sheila's book. I asked her to connect what I was reading in her book to this collection of photographs. It took a while for me to understand how the book and exhibition are connected.

Murray: Yes, we met at that talk. I think during our talk [on Saturday, November 5] what we will bring is a really interesting perspective on the photographs that may or may not be something that  Zun or Sophie or other people involved will necessarily immediately grasp. I hope we’ll make connections to the material that might not easily be evident because it provoked and excited all sorts of conversations and questions between us which go beyond the photographs themselves. I think that's going to be interesting to share. 

AGOinsider: What were some of the initial reactions you had to the exhibition, to see the Black experience presented and celebrated in this way, especially during that time from the 1950s to the early 2000s?

 Auchinvole: Well, those same photographs could have been taken yesterday. They're timeless in what they depict like Black family gatherings and other occasions. They're the same as what you would see today. Our lives are a little bit different today, shaped a little bit differently, but we still long for that connection.

When I look at the photographs, I see people trying to show that they mattered and that they mattered enough that a picture was taken of them. All of the pictures I feel come from a place of love. I recognize so much of it immediately even in just the body language. There’s a familiarity in them. So much of it is of us [Black people], just trying to be in a world that really has made it difficult for us to be.

Murray:  Yes. I'm going to say that in some ways, it's less familiar to me. But of course, it's familiar in terms of the family photograph. I grew up in an English context so, in my mind, it's slightly different. 

It's just family life. People take pictures. If you've got a camera, you take a picture. Families always take pictures of kids, take pictures of those gatherings and those celebrations, dinners and all the rest. Just like White folks do. And so, when I walk into that room [the gallery space] for the first time, I wonder why are we looking at Black people on the wall in a gallery? If these were White family photographs, what would we be thinking? And what would our response be? How would we understand the meaning of the photographs or the meaning of the exhibition? Because that’s what the exhibition really becomes for me. A conversation, not so much about the individual photographs, although they become especially powerful when they're projected. 

I wonder if the exhibition makes a spectacle of Black people. But, of course, it normalizes Black life, though it’s a horrifying thought that Black life would need in any way to be normalized. But in fact, for people coming in from the outside, living outside that context, our [Black people’s] context, that's kind of important. Which is extraordinary when you think of all the Black culture that's out there in TV, movies, music, and so on.

AGOinsider: Do either of you have a connection to photography?

Murray: My late partner was a photographer. And that's how I'm connected to Sophie. I think that's what got her thinking about the photographs that come up in the book, which are very few, but hugely important to the story. Certainly, in the book, it is the photographs that are evidence that a person was real. Had lived. 

Auchinvole: And in the case of these photographs [in What Matters Most], they're either found on the street or found online. Somebody was willing to put them out as garbage or put them online as a commodity which is a really interesting thought. Zun invested value in them by picking them up and preserving them. Through each photograph, the story of a life is told which is similar to Sheila's book. It's through a photograph that the protagonist in the story [Cyril] actually learns more about himself as he searches for Edward. It speaks to the importance of us investing our time and energy into other people's lives, instead of just living in silos.

Sheila Murray.

AGOinsider: Sheila, can you tell us about your book Finding Edward?

Murray:  I started writing it at least 10 years ago. I really wanted to explore the experience of being mixed race, as I am… I lived in Toronto at the time so it’s a Toronto-based book. I knew young Jamaicans who were really determined to make a life outside of Jamaica. Those young people inspired my thinking about Cyril, the main character in the book.  He finds himself in Toronto in 2012 when he's about 20. He has to figure out how to make a life in Toronto. It's not easy and as he's trying to find his feet, Cyril comes across evidence [photographs and letters] of a young mixed-race man, Edward, who lived in Toronto in the 1920s. He was born in Toronto and abandoned by his parents. Cyril was abandoned by his white father which makes a connection. Edward then becomes an important anchor for Cyril. The book also documents some of the important contributions that Black people have made to Canada. 

AGOinsider: Evie, how long have you been involved with the community archive at Stewart Memorial Church? What drew you to it?

Auchinvole: Since 2010. We got a summer student to help us organize our rather jumbled-up archive. And that's when I started understanding that as Black people, sometimes we just do things because they need to be done. 

The archive was papers all thrown together without being in any sort of organized fashion. There were things that have been given to the church over the many years like drawings, books and photographs. They were all lumped together by each year like 1966. They weren't really seeing it as part of a story. Or part of how, when somebody gives something to the church, it's part of their feeling about the church. Otherwise, they wouldn't give it.

When I was looking at the archive, I was struck by the minutes that were being taken at the very beginning of church life in the 1830s. The minutes are taken in pencil. I thought to myself this speaks to poverty. Pencil isn't fade-resistant. No one thought that maybe we should be writing this down in something more permanent because we're writing history. Eventually, I spoke to the church members in terms of the value of our archive and got them to support the idea of preserving our history. 

I ended up being invited to join this talk because I made a comment to Sophie Hackett about how important Black photographs are and how sometimes we don't see them as important beyond our own family album. When we downsize or we move, these are the things that get left behind. I mentioned to her that here at Stewart Memorial Church, we have this small but growing archive, in which we encourage people to give photographs that they no longer feel are relevant to them or they don't want to hang on to. They give them to the church so we can be a repository for them and sort of guardian over them because, again, they all tell the story of this church's ongoing life from its beginnings to the present day, and how it still figures importantly in the lives of Black people in Hamilton. Practically everybody knows this church because it’s a hub for connecting to other areas of community life in Hamilton.

To attend this talk this Saturday, November 5 at Noon, grab your general admission ticket and spend your Saturday afternoon at the AGO. Auchinvole and Murray will be speaking in Edmond G. Odette Family Gallery on Level 1 where What Matters Most: Photographs of Black Life is on view.