In an age of social media, global urbanization, protest and revolution, photography plays a crucial role in mediating our understanding of socio-political issues and conflicts.This two-venue exhibition, Public: Collective Identity | Occupied Spaces, brings together images from around the world to explore the ways we perform and articulate our identity in public, and the tensions that arise from the occupation of public space. From street photography to appropriated web imagery, photojournalism to conceptual projects, the works in this show challenge and redefine our perception of the public sphere.

Photographs capture the decisive moments in daily life that crystallize the urban experience. Yet, within the confines of traditional street photography, there are limits to what the camera can see. The artists showing at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art expand the boundaries of street practice and the shifting parameters of public space to make the unseen aspects of urban existence visible.

The intensification of global capital and the emergence of network society have reshaped the public sphere. In the West, much of what passes for public space is now private commercial space. As the traditional notion of public space slowly shifts we see the emergence of non-places (hetero-topias) and transit zones that occupy a gap between public and private (such as elevators and subways). As a key nexus in the changing expression of identity in contemporary society, photography articulates our position within this new public sphere. It both documents performances and instigates events. The camera’s presence alters behaviour and catches us in unguarded moments, revealing the private side of our carefully constructed public face.

Michael Wolf (b. Germany, based in Paris and Hong Kong) explores the dense social fabric of the urban landscape and the juxtaposition of public and private space. In Tokyo Compression (2009), his closely framed portraits of Japanese commuters on the notoriously overcrowded Tokyo subway system capture the tensions of city life. With their faces pressed against the glass, the commuters symbolize the alienation of contemporary urban experience. Rather than focusing on the architectural space of the subway, Wolf creates a visual analogy for the experience of passengers confined by public transit. Seemingly suffering through their claustrophobic commute, the subjects are captured for our voyeuristic inspection. Their physical intimacy with their fellow travellers, combined with a lack of any meaningful social interchange, can be seen as a symptom of Tokyo’s hypermodernity. By invading their public privacy, the artist offers us a glimpse of the collective rigours of city life. Wolf’s images capture fleeting moments that exemplify our connection to the larger structures of modern society and public space.

Bill Sullivan (b. United States, based in New York) looks at a related aspect of life in the city with his series Stop Down (2003–04). Photographs of elevator passengers in New York City are taken as the doors open and close. Emerging from his engagement with street photography, Sullivan’s situational practice is determined by the action of the elevator rather than by his search for a decisive moment. The images, taken without their subjects’ knowledge, capture the phenomenon of a shared experience of public space that lacks social engagement. Similar to Wolf’s Tokyo portraits, there isa voyeuristic quality to the images; we are given permission to look into a space in which the occupants largely attempt to avoid eye contact. By photographing a predetermined yet itinerant situation, the work reveals a lack of connection within the social structures of modern life. Sullivan’s photo-graphs are also presented as a Public Installation at Pearson Airport.

Jon Rafman (b. Canada, based in Montreal) explores new forms of virtually represented public spaces, specifically from Google Street View, by mining this publicly available archive for images that speak to modern social life. In The Nine Eyes of Google Street View (2009– ), the artist selects images from the eponymous website that raise issues of surveillance. The work reveals that the ostensibly neutral endeavour of mapping the public sphere is saturated with the contingency of daily life. The blurred faces of the figures that appear in the images, a nod to privacy on the part of Google, create a tension in the resulting works between the specificity of their documentation of place and the anonymity of the people who inhabit it. Street View’s representation of the drivable world is decisively reconfigured by the artist into meaningful fragments that convey a message about the unpredictability of individual existence. Rafman’s work is also presented in a Featured Exhibition at Angell Gallery.

Barry Frydlender (b. Israel, based in Tel Aviv) creates panoramic street scenes that are visual records of contemporary urban experience. Drawing on the Western pictorial tradition, his works investigate the social structures of contemporary life through their artful engagement with everyday existence. Expanding the conventional photographic depiction of a single moment in time, Frydlender’s digitally-reconstructed scenes are a carefully considered assemblage of multiple moments that he captures using a handheld camera. The numerous temporalities of the works demand extended viewing, highlighting the tension they exploit between documentation and interpretation. Frydlender’s Rodeo Drive (2011), which depicts one of the world’s most famous shopping districts, presents a scene in which the unassuming appearance and demeanour of the pedestrians conflicts with the purported glamour of the location. Grosvenor Gardens, London (2010) emphasizes the quiet and introspective aspects of existence within large urban centres, whereas 57th and Sixth Avenue, New York (2008) captures the dynamics of city life on the street. The composition of Frydlender’s works brings out the otherwise unnoticeable significance of the everyday rituals of our existence while they subtly raise questions about the socio-economic classes that share public space.

Baudouin Mouanda (b. Democratic Republic of Congo, based in Brazzaville), a member of the Generation Elili photography collective, examines urban Congolese society. His series La Sapologie (2008) documents the practices of the “Sociétédes Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes” (Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People). Mouanda’s brightly coloured and sharply angled images capture the sapeurs as they promenade through the streets of Brazzaville. Their exuberant public performance of style has been important to post-civil war Congolese society as a form of advocacy for peace and a new vision for African society. A grid of images that combines two series, Délestage (2010) and Sur le Trottoir du Savoir (2011), explores how the Congolese have reconfigured public space in response to poverty and a lack of reliable infrastructure. The former looks at their careful use of oil and gas, a scarce and precious commodity in many parts of the world; in the latter, the streets of Brazzaville become a space of learning and reading, illuminated by street lights. Mouanda’s work reflects a society at the crossroads between past and present, war and peace, colonial occupation and Congolese identity.

Cheryl Dunn (b. United States, based in New York) documents youth culture by photographing events that bring together thousands of people. In Festivals are Good (1997–2008), she examines the subculture of music festivals, focusing on the audience rather than the public spectacle they attend. Working with analogue film, her incorporation of technical “accidents”—including light leaks and camera shake—into her practice give a sense of immediacy and chance to her exploration of the collective experience. Her work portrays festivals as spaces inhabited by temporary communities, while capturing the assertion of individual identities. Dunn’s images reveal that the audience engages in performance as much as the musicians on stage, crafting a collective euphoria through their close physical connection.For the price of a ticket, the audience buys a measure of freedom to experiment with new forms of sociality developed in response to the aesthetic spectacles they consume.

Philippe Chancel (b. France, based in Paris), works at the intersection of art, journalism, and documentary. Hisseries Arirang (2006) documents the annual mass games inPyongyang celebrating the Workers Party of Korea and the birth of Kim Il-sung. During the festival, tens of thousands of performers coordinate their actions to tell a history of Korea, from its origins to the dream of re-unification with the South, and focus on the glory of the current political regime. The performers in the stands act like pixels, holding up colour-coded cards to create massive scenic backdrops. On the field, others engage in highly-choreographed gymnastic exercises and traditional dances to create geometric patterns. The performances submerge individual identity into a singular collective entity. Taken from a vantage point that approximates the viewpoint of the dictator, Kim Jong-il,Chancel uses a wide-angle format to emphasize the mesmerizing effect of the spectacle. The collective activity aims to produce an ideology of national identity, in both the participants and the spectators—transforming their communal occupation of public space into a single, tightly controlled shared experience.

Collective identities are not fixed; they are subject to time, place, and shifting circumstance. As played out in the public realm, they can become socially charged and politically contested. Since its inception, photography has documented, participated in, and influenced social struggle. It reveals hidden tensions and exposes matters of common concern. The works at the University of Toronto Art Centre suggest that the role photography plays in engaging conflict can be as contested as the spaces it represents. As cameras have become ubiquitous and networked, photography has become a more crucial component of social change. Activists use digital cameras and social media to facilitate protest; academics use archival images to deepen our understand-ing of history; and artists use photographic technologies to challenge our perception of public space. Journalists are wounded and killed in the pursuit of photographs, while authorities continue to suppress images to prevent official embarrassment and indictment. As mass movements become global events and international conflicts become matters of domestic concern, the production and circulation of images are an ever more important part of our collective identities.

Noh Suntag (b. South Korea, based in Seoul) explores the political and social life of modern Korea. His series String Pulling Incident (2008–9), documents the months-long mass protests against the South Korean government brought about by the decision to allow the re-importation of US beef after the mad cow crisis. The demonstrations took place in the context of a broader debate over the presence of US forces in the Republic and a contentious Free Trade Agreement with the US. At the height of the protests, the government occupied its own city, barricading the capital with shipping containers—nicknamed Castle Myung-Bak, after the SouthKorean president—to prevent protesters from reaching the President’s official residence. Documenting massive crowds, police barricades, and violent clashes between protesters and police, Noh’s images reveal the performative aspects of South Korean politics and its use of public space as an arena for contesting political issues and challenging national identity.

Benjamin Lowy (b. United States, based in New York) presents two related takes on his experiences as a photojournalist working with US forces in Iraq / Perspectives (2003–8). Windows captures street scenes of Baghdad framed by the portholes of armoured personnel carriers. The inclusion of the window-frame in the images emphasizes the distance between the occupying forces and the Iraqis. Engaging with the tradition of street photography, the photographs offer an alienated perspective on Iraqi life during wartime. The second series, Nightvision, documents the actions of US troops as they use the cover of darkness to interact with the local population. The green hue from the filters used to intensify the available light heightens our sense of distance from the events and forces us to confront the limited perspective on the conflict that photography grants. Using these strategies, Lowy’s work reflects the necessarily controlled position of embedded media by making their embeddedness a crucial part of each photograph. He emphasizes the bias intrinsic to photographic framing and how this shapes our understand-ing of conflict.

Richard Mosse (b. Ireland, based in Dublin) creates an extensive series of lush images of war-torn, eastern Congo, entitled Infra (2010–11). Using Kodak’s infrared Aerochrome film, which was developed in collaboration with the US military to reveal camouflaged positions, the photographs are Mosse’s attempt to make the invisible aspects of conflict visible. Infrared film makes the greens of the landscape appear hot pink, creating a tension between the psychedelic exoticism of the images and the brutal reality of the conflict they depict. The highly aesthetic, large-scale landscapes are sites of ethnic cleansing; the deforested land is symptomatic of Tutsi pastoralism displacing Hunde subsistence farming. The portraits of militiamen give a human face to the struggle; the images of traditional huts—provisional structures that are frequently abandoned—focus the viewer’s attention on a conflict that otherwise leaves few traces. The seductive quality of this series is a strategic choice that encourages engagement with the issues and draws attention to the shifting circumstances of the occupied sites.

Ariella Azoulay (b. Israel, based in Tel Aviv) is an academic, author, curator, and activist whose ongoing research explores the relations between photography and citizen-ship. Different Ways not to Say Deportation (2010) is based on photographs taken between 1947 and 1950, which she viewed at the International Committee of the Red CrossArchives in Geneva. Captioned by the Archives as the “transfer” and “repatriation” of Arabs from Palestinian villages, Azoulay was not allowed to show the photographs in public because of her insistence on describing them as images of deportation, which conflicted with the ICRC’s policy of political neutrality. Azoulay contends that theArchives’ neutrality is a fiction that takes sides in the conflict, as demonstrated by the restrictions they place on the public’s usage of materials. As a means to convey her stance, Azoulay created drawings based on the original photo-graphs. Combining the drawings with descriptive texts, the resulting photographic documents are her attempt to get around these restrictions and show the “unshowable” photographs. Azoulay’s project highlights the contested nature of photographic meaning and its potential to influence events long after the moment an image is created.

Tarek Abouamin (b. Egypt, based in Halifax) is a cinematographer, filmmaker, and university lecturer. In his documentary film 18 Days (2011), he captures the pulse of the Egyptian Revolution from Pierre Sioufi’s 9th floor apartment overlooking Tahrir Square, which served as a hub for revolutionaries, journalists, and news networks. Abouamin combines the encounters he filmed with amateur and news footage of clashes in the street, interviews with activists, and crowd-sourced images that exist at the intersection of new social media and current social movements. His curated project Preparing for Dawn (2011) includes 480 photographs selected from 8000 images gathered at the Tahrir Square Media Centre. Captured on digital and cellphone cameras by protesters, revolutionaries, and everyday Egyptians, the images offer a multi-faceted, photographic engagement with the uprising that led to the overthrow of the Egyptian regime. The prevalence of cameras enabled the Media Centre to assemble a massive archive of images that provide a dynamic perspective on the uprising and a sense of the personal risks taken to participate in and chronicle the revolution. While we may now interpret them as documents, they were originally understood as interventions into the political situation and were circulated by the participants asa form of political action.

Sanaz Mazinani (b. Iran, based in San Francisco and Toronto) creates work that explores the political and social effects of digital culture. The large circular objects from her series Conference of the Birds (2012) are complex pat-terns of media-sourced imagery documenting the Occupy Movement (Toronto, Amsterdam, and Rome) and the Arab Spring (Cairo, Sidi Bouzid, and Tripoli). Deftly combining images to create intertwined patterns that reference the aesthetic traditions of Islamic art, Mazinani proposes new structures of cultural coexistence. The multiplied and mirrored images are placed in tension with each other, creating a kaleidoscopic effect that blends colour and shape. Close analysis undercuts the reference to domestic ornamentation, revealing charged images of social conflict. Mazinani draws attention to the dense networks of political activism and the mass mediated forms of communication through which images circulate. A related series is presented in a Featured Exhibition at Stephen Bulger Gallery.

Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber (b. Austria, based in Vancouver and Vienna) have been exploring the politics of urban space for over 20 years. Templeton Five Affair, March 1967 (2010), part of their project The University Paradox, reactivates the 1967 student protests at Simon Fraser University. The wallpaper component reveals a campus protest scene with the protesters removed, leaving only the modernist architecture; the four panels present the same scene with the architecture missing, leaving only the protesters. The split work explores the tensions between academic freedom, education, and vocational training embedded in the contested space of the university. The nine photographs of Events Are Always Original (2010) contain archival images that document the aftermath of a student occupation of the campus. Bitter / Weber’s work highlights the difficulty and necessity of reclaiming spaces of political possibility represented by the demonstrations. A component of this project is presented as a Public Installation at the Power Plant.

Ai Weiwei (b. China, based in Beijing) is an architect and artist who focuses on political, cultural, and social criticism in his work. Study of Perspective (1995–2010) documents his performative gesture of giving the finger to iconic landmarks, objects, and cityscapes around the world. The project began in response to the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square, which saw a violent end to public demonstrations for political reform. The crude gesture indicates Ai’s refusal of proscribed reality and his rejection of authority. This stance led to his arrest and temporary detainment by the Chinese government in 2011, and the ongoing restrictions placed on his freedom. The title of the series refers both to the foreshortening effect of the artist’s hand inserted into the images, and to their assertion of critical distance in our experience of public space. The perspective of the images also places viewers in Ai’s position, implicating us as participants in the gesture. The series emphasizes the importance of free expression against the authoritarian and nationalist impulses intrinsic to the places he salutes. Taken in a manner reminiscent of tourist snapshots, the images focus on the political message rather than the formal quality of the photographs. Blurring lines between art and advocacy, Ai’s images highlight the social and political effectiveness of photography as a tool for activist expression.

Photography has the ability to capture and shape contemporary experience, and to stimulate and effect social change. It empowers artists, photographers, journalists, activists, and citizens to influence our collective identities and inform our perception of occupied space. Immersed in images, we collectively participate in the performance of our public personas. The ubiquity of digital cameras alters social existence as photography suffuses daily life and activates new forms of civic engagement. As the circulation of images becomes increasingly difficult to control, the boundaries between the private and public use of photography are vanishing. While images can remain private, they are now more easily made public, and it is this freedom and mobility that activates their social and political charge.

Curated by Matthew Brower, David Liss and Bonnie Rubenstein