2009

Canada
Since the early 1970s, Montreal based artist Lynne Cohen has focused her attention on the strangeness and contradictions in the everyday world, photographing domestic and institutional interior spaces such as men’s clubs, classrooms, spas, military installations, laboratories and other uninhabited public and private interiors. While Cohen’s work has a social and political edge, and is sometimes critical, it also has a wry humour. The sites she photographs exist, but often look like constructions or installations lifted from a contemporary art museum. Cohen has been in countless solo and group exhibitions around the world, and is represented in over 50 public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Australian National Gallery, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Canada Council Art Bank. She has published five monographs: Occupied Territory, L’endroit du décor / Lost and Found, No Man’s Land, Camouflage and Cover, in addition to many individual and group catalogues.

Cohen studied at the University of Wisconsin (BS 1967); the Slade School of Art, University of London (1964-1965); and Eastern Michigan University (MA 1969). She has held teaching positions at Eastern Michigan University (1968-1973); University of Ottawa (1974-2005); School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1984, 1992); Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1996) and Virginia Commonwealth University (2005-2006). Born in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1944, Cohen has lived and worked in Canada since 1973 and currently resides in Montreal. She is a recipient of numerous awards of merit, including the Governor General’s Award in Visual Arts and Media Arts (Canada) in 2005.

Lynne Cohen, Spa, 1994, chromogenic print, 121.9 cm x 147.3 cm, Courtesy of Olga Korper Gallery © 2009 Lynne Cohen

Mexico
Federico Gama was born in Mexico City in 1963. He studied journalism at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and graphic design at the Autonomous Metropolitan University Xochimilco. He has been a documentary photographer of urban youth and themes since 1988. Gama’s work has received numerous awards and recognitions. In 2008, he was nominated for the All Roads Photography award by the National Geographic Society. In 2002, he was awarded the main prize at the 10th Photography Biennale organized by Centro de la Imagen. During the tour of the exhibition for this biennale, Gama won the Audience Award in the cities of Mexico and Oaxaca. In 1999, Gama received first place in the International Biennial of Photography in Puerto Rico. In 2001, he was among the finalists for the first edition of the Premio Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano en Cartagena, Colombia. He was a fellow of the Young Creators Grant program of FONCA in 1997.

Gama has participated in 20 individual and 33 group exhibitions in Mexico, Italy, Argentina, Guatemala, Brazil, Germany, China, the United States and Spain. He has lectured at conferences and university courses, and at schools of photography. He is co-author of Jóvenes, Cultura e Identidades Urbanas (Youth, Urban Culture and Identities) (Porrúa and UAM Iztapalapa, 2002), and Cholos a la Neza, Otra Identidad de la Migracion (Cholos a la Neza, Another Identity of Migration) (IMJ, 2008).

Federico Gama, Escondido, from the series Mazahuacholoskatopunk, chromogenic Endura print, 78.5 cm x 120 cm, courtesy of the artist © 2009 Federico Gama

Canada
Jin-me Yoon was born in 1960 in Seoul, Korea. She immigrated with her family to Vancouver, Canada, in 1968. Yoon received a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of British Columbia, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Concordia University. As an artist working with photography and video, Yoon's work is recognized across Canada and internationally for contributing to ongoing discussions about the complexities of identity and place in an accelerated, globalized era.

Using herself as subject, Yoon explores how her own image and history function in a wider context. Works like Souvenirs of the Self, A Group of Sixty-Seven, Touring Home from Away, and Unbidden deal with interrelated questions of identity, memory and place – as well as with social and psychic displacement. Through subtle humour and a variety of references and associations, Yoon's work addresses the social and historical narratives, constructions and representations that surround these questions.

Yoon currently lives in Vancouver, where she teaches visual arts at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. Her work is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery in Vancouver.

Jin-me Yoon, Souvenirs of the Self (Rocky Mountain Bus Tour), 1991-2000, 165.1 cm x 101.6 cm, chromogenic Endura print, Courtesy of Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver © 2009 Jin-me Yoon.

Laura González received her Ph.D. in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona (1998). She also holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1990) and a Bachelor in Visual Arts from the National School of Fine Arts, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). In 1986 she received an award from the National Photography Biennale in Mexico, and in 1989, the grant for young photographers from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts. She is a member of the National Research System (SNI - 1999), the Advisory Board of the National Photographic Archive System (SINAFO- 2002) and of the Fundación Cultural Mariana Yampolsky, A.C. (2002).

She currently holds a full time tenure-track position as researcher and professor at the Institute for Aesthetic Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico (IIE - UNAM). Her current research project is Towards an Aesthetics for the 21st Century: The Artisticity of the New Image Technologies.

Author of the book Photography and Painting, Two Different Media?, published in Barcelona by Ed. Gustavo Gili (original version in Spanish). Along with José Falconi (Cultural Agents, Harvard University) Laura González is currently coordinating the seminar Visible Rights: Photography as Cultural and Artistic Agency.

Dot Tuer is a writer and cultural historian who specializes in Canadian and Latin American art and photography, with a focus on the contemporary and modern periods. She also has a scholarly interest in colonial Latin American history. Her research addresses the relationship of social memory to political agency and the theorization of mestizaje as a site of intercultural exchange between European and indigenous cultures.

Tuer holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Toronto and is Professor of Art History and Humanities at OCAD University, where she has served as the Acting Dean of Liberal Studies, Chair of CRCP (the undergraduate program in curatorial and critical studies housed in the Faculty of Art), and Interim Director of the Graduate Program in Curatorial and Critical Practices.

Tuer is widely published in art magazines, peer-reviewed journals, and book anthologies. A collection of her essays on art, Mining the Media Archive, was published in 2006. She has received numerous awards for her writing on art and culture, including the Ontario Art Galleries Association Curatorial Writing Award, Toronto Arts Award, National Magazine Award, and Canada Council Senior Artist and Ontario Arts Council Literature grants.

Tuer also works in the curatorial field. Most recently she was the Guest Curator for the Art Gallery of Ontario’s exhibition on Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Frida and Diego: Passion, Politics, and Painting (October 20, 2012-January 13, 2013).

Tuer has served as a board member for the Power Plant; the Toronto Arts Council; the Cinemateque Ontario; the Funnel Film Theatre; and Prefix Photo, Public, Fuse and C magazines. She also has served as a juror for all levels of government cultural funding, as well as for international festivals and museums including the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Grange Photography Prize when the partnering country was Mexico.

Museographer, researcher, writer and editor, Alfonso Morales graduated in social and political sciences as well as from the University Centre for Film Studies at UAM. He was part of the founding team for the Centre for Graphic Arts of the General National Archives. Morales Carrillo has held directorships of the departments of research and museology at the National Museum of Popular Culture. He has coordinated research and exhibitions, both national and international, on different subjects related to popular culture in Mexico: the review theatre, the circus, the comic strip, calendar images, games of fortune, music, radio and cinema. Morales Carrillo was curator of the exhibition Asamblea de Ciudades: Cultura y vida cotidiana en la ciudad de México, 1920–1950. He has contributed to the conservation and dissemination of various photographic, artistic and political archives, including that of photographer Manuel Ramos and caricaturist Abel Quezada. Morales is author of Los recursos de la nostalgia (essay), Parches y remiendos (short story), El Gran Lente (a historiography of José Bustamante’s photo studio), El teatro de los hechos (research into the career of Enrique Metinides, a yellow press/human interest journalist), Foto insurrecta (a survey of the works of photojournalist Rodrigo Moya), Iconofagia (essay) and Eternidad fugitiva (essay).

Morales Carrillo is co-author of Imaginarios y fotografía en México 1839–1970. He has written for theatre and cabaret, among them Atracciones Fénix, a play directed by Jesusa Rodríguez and invited for participation at the Mozart Festival in Vienna, Austria. Morales Carrillo was awarded an Ariel for his artistic direction of the movie La Leyenda de una mascara, directed by José Buil. Morales has published essays and articles on the history of photography in Mexico, and on the work of specific authors. He was chief of photography of Foto-Click and Zonas magazines. He is currently director of Luna Córnea magazine, published by Centro de la Imagen, as well as curator of the photography collection at Fundación Televisa. Morales’s most recent project was Gabriel Figueroa: Cinefotógrafo.

Maia-Mari Sutnik is the Curator of Photography at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), where she began developing the photography collection in 1979. She has contributed to many publications, including international editions of Contemporary Photographers and Contemporary Masterpieces, and more recently, Imaging a Shattering Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate. Major exhibitions curated include Gutmann, Michel Lambeth: Photographer, and Pop Photographica: Photography’s Objects in Everyday Life. Her last curatorial project, Eisenstaedt: Two Visions, was produced in conjunction with the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) exhibition Ansel Adams. Her recent essay, Deuil: New Work by Spring Hurlbut appears in Prefix Photo 15: Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto, 2007.