Here and Now

In celebration of Capture Photography Festival’s 10th anniversary, co-curators Emmy Lee Wall and Chelsea Yuill commissioned 10 Vancouver-based artists to produce new lens-based artworks that respond, in whole or in part, to the city’s landscape, people, history or culture. It was hoped that selecting artists with varied approaches to the medium would produce a “featured exhibition” as diverse as the city itself, and by all accounts, Here and Now is precisely that.

Capture’s inaugural 2013 festival was conceived of as an annual celebration of lens-based art, in light of the city’s significant historical contribution to the international conversation concerning conceptual photographic practices. The current festival has both expanded and refined its focus. In addition to connecting Vancouver to the world through lens-based art, Capture is equally interested in the influence of this quicksilver city in shaping the way local artists, curators, writers and patrons think of and speak of lens-based art today.

As in past festivals, Capture presents artists at various stages of development – from emerging to mid-career to senior levels. Among the emerging artists included in Here and Now are Alexine McLeod, who has contributed an affecting still life, Oscillation (408&80) (2020), which revels in the unity of colour, line and form; Jaiden George, whose Hinkiicims, Digitization Studio (2023) features the preparation of two Northwest Coast masks for entry into the realm of photographic representation; and Karen Zalamea, who in a nod to Stan Douglas (and Ed Ruscha before him) presents The Joyce-Collingwood Food Hub (2022-23), a photo of six small Filipino-run businesses under threat of redevelopment.