Join artist and Toronto Photo Laureate Michèle Pearson Clarke for a conversation with AGO Associate Curator of Photography Julie Crooks about The Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photographs, a singular collection of more than 3,500 historical images from 34 countries including Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad. This visual record contains studio portraits, landscapes and tourist views and brings to life the changing economies, environments and communities that emerged post-emancipation. The Collection includes nearly every photographic format available during the years 1840 to 1940, including prints, postcards, daguerreotypes, lantern slides, albums, and stereographs.

Michèle Pearson Clarke is a Trinidad-born artist, writer and educator working in photography, film, video and installation. She holds an MSW from the University of Toronto, and she received her MFA from Ryerson University in 2015. Her work has been included in exhibitions and screenings at Le Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal; the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; LagosPhoto Festival; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Maryland Institute College of Art; ltd los angeles; and Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto. Clarke is currently a sessional lecturer in the Documentary Media Studies program at Ryerson University, and the Photo Laureate for the City of Toronto (2019-2022).

Julie Crooks is Associate Curator, Photography at the AGO where she has curated the exhibitions Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires (2018), Free. Black. North (2017) and Women in Focus Collection Rotations (2017-ongoing). Prior to joining the AGO in 2017, Julie Crooks curated exhibitions for many organizations including BAND (Black Artists Networks in Dialogue) and the Royal Ontario Museum’s Of Africa project. She holds a PhD from the Department of History of Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, U.K. Crooks’s area of specialty is Art of Africa and the Diaspora.