news | Thursday December 9, 2010

Self Portraits: Edward and Eadweard

(Photogs: Edward Sheriff Curtis and Eadweard Muybridge)

It is perhaps uncanny that two of our titles explore the subject of two groundbreaking photographers mere syllables apart, whose work and life is examined with the same amount of scrutiny, where the lens is turned back towards the purveyor of images in question, images out of which the subjects emerge from the frame in vivid and surprising detail.

The Edward Curtis Project

We are delighted to announce the long awaited arrival of The Edward Curtis Project, a multidimensional work examining the nature of photographs and the life of the individual who took them. In this case, the passion and zeal that drove Edward Curtis to take beautiful and beautifully suspect pictures of everything he believed to be the “Vanishing Indian” in North America.

The play by Marie Clements was performed in tandem with a photographic exhibit and simultaneous critique of Edward Curtis’ vision by Rita Leistner, whose subjects posed for two images, choosing ceremonial or traditional regalia for one image and daily street clothes like snow pants and ball caps for the second — a comment on the dualities and dynamic existence of First Nations, Métis and Inuit life.

This new title endeavours to display the splendour and celebration of this artistic collaboration by combining the powerful words of Marie Clements with Rita Leistner‘s exceptional photographs.

Studies in Motion

The year is 1885 and Eadweard Muybridge is embarking on a mission of cataloging animal movement and human gestures, dissecting time and in so doing, revealing a world invisible to the naked eye. However, Muybridge is haunted by the ghosts of his past actions; the man he killed, the child he abandoned, and the woman he thought he knew.

Produced by the Electric Company Theatre and directed by Kim Collier, Kevin Kerr‘s recent play about Eadweard Muybridge, Studies in Motion, is a physically and visually explosive spectacle, exploring themes of memory, identity, and the quest for meaning at the very beginning of our culture’s obsession with images.