Over the years, CONTACT has produced site-specific installations of photo-graphy on billboards throughout the city of Toronto. For the first time in our history, public installations will be presented in five Canadian cities, coast to coast—from Vancouver to Halifax. This new initiative features artists exhibiting prominently within the festival in Toronto, and repositions their works across the country.These images resonate within each location, revealing compelling relationships between photography and urban environments.

Vancouver – Fred Herzog
Homer St & Georgia St

Surrounded by the bustling streets of downtown Vancouver, Fred Herzog’s photographs mirror the language of advertising within the city. On a rotating trio of billboards, street scenes documented during the postwar era revitalize the present-day reality of urban life with Kodachrome-coloured memories.
Primary Exhibition→

Calgary – Scarlett Hooft Graafland
9th Ave SE, between 12 St SE & 13 St SE, Inglewood

Situated within Calgary’s Inglewood neighbourhood, six images from Scarlett Hooft Graafland’s series, You Winter, let’s get divorced, reveal a way of life shaped by cultural tradition and a harsh climate. These evocative images of icy landscapes in Nunavut–transformed by the artist’s temporary sculptural interventions—highlight the urgent need to protect the environment.
Primary Exhibition→

Ottawa – Denis Darzacq
Bank St, between Somerset St W & Nepean St

Denis Darzacq’s images capture figures as they elegantly fall, float or levitate within the highly stylized environment of a carpet and floor coverings store. His ten photographs displayed along the sidewalk in Ottawa’s retail district call attention to spirituality, consumerism, and the tension between “being and having.”
Featured Exhibition→

Montreal – Jessica Eaton
Ave Van Horne, at St Urbain & St Laurent

In Jessica Eaton’s three billboards, nature is reimagined in technicolour within the industrial highway sprawl surrounding Montreal. The vibrancy of these experimental images is contrasted by an otherwise drab cityscape.
Featured Exhibition→

Halifax – Maslen & Mehra
Ferry Terminal

Within Halifax’s ferry terminal waiting lounge, commuters will encounter Maslen & Mehra’s conceptual photo-interventions featuring two-dimensional mirror figures within landscapes. Their images reveal an interplay between culture and nature, reflecting upon the city as the central hub for a large surrounding rural area.
Featured Exhibition→

Presented in partnership with Pattison Outdoor Advertising and Nikon Canada.