Many Lenses on West Broadway – Winnipeg Free Press

Every Monday afternoon on West Broadway, a collection of shutterbugs—some as young as six, others older than the cameras in hand—step out of Art City's doors to photograph themselves and their surroundings.

They walk out the front door of a non-profit arts center, tilt their lenses in all directions, and find scenes that define the visual identity of an often misunderstood and misrepresented part of Winnipeg, as dense and vital as any in the neighborhood. city.

Over 25 years, hundreds of participants have taken the weekly tour as part of Art City's free photography program, leaving the neon box at 616 Broadway and returning with unmistakable views of trees, street lights, apartment buildings. butcher shop signs—to darkroom pools.

“One of the byproducts of this photography program is that we've chronicled West Broadway from 1998 to the present,” says artistic director Eddie Ayoub, who began volunteering with the organization in 2003.

Off Young and Broadway, The new exhibition, which can be seen at the Platform Center (121-100 Arthur Street) until June 1, tells three stories at once: neighborhood, organization and generation.

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Soon after its 1998 founding by artist and organizer Wanda Koop, who became a Member of the Order of Canada in 2006, Art City was formerly the site of an LGBTTQ+ nightclub and a short-lived bicycle repair shop. creativity in the neighborhood, inviting visitors to find a safe place to explore their artistic expression.

Around that time, a 23-year-old industrial arts graduate named Monique Lysak set up a small darkroom in a closet in Art City's basement with the help of Photo Central's then-owner, Dick Toews.

As a gift, Lysak began showing Art City participants how to make photograms, which is printing by laying objects on photographic paper and exposing them to light.

“It's like painting with light,” says Lysak, who now teaches graphics in the department of the Louis Riel School.

At the time, Lysak said, it was cheaper to develop black-and-white film than to develop color film.

Costs and affordability led the photography program to adapt to a noir style that, even at the time, may have seemed like a throwback to an earlier era.

When the participants started taking their own photos, the results were impressive and meaningful, says Lysak.

“It's always an amazing moment to see a picture come to life on paper,” he says.

“Everyone was proud to have (the cameras) and be able to use them. It opened their eyes. They felt confident and worthy.”

Over the next quarter century, several instructors and volunteers continued to keep the program alive, Ayub said.

Before current instructor Natalie Baird took over in 2016, instructors included Lindsay Bond, Mandy Malazdrewicz, Antoinette Dyksman, Alix Reynolds, and David Witick, while Robert Wilson, Duncan McNairney, and Alexis L. Volunteers like Gries were among those who gave their time to the program. , expertise and equipment.

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The photo exhibit itself begins outside the gallery space, where visitors are greeted by a street light, pedestrian signals, and street signs at the intersection of Broadway and Young Streets, constructed mostly out of wood, cardboard, and duct tape by Art City participants. . A glowing green light is an invitation to enter.

In the gallery, the soft quality of photographs selected by curators Ayoub and Baird with participants is a welcoming force that invites visitors to look up and around as they explore two faces at work and play: literal faces of program participants and neighborhood residents, as well as the neighborhood's changing face of fashion, detailed by streetcars and commercial typography.

This kind of lived-in, documentary quality is reminiscent of John Paskiewicz's famous photographic chronicles of the North End, only this collection is told through multiple perspectives, often with “flaws” preserved, keeping the exhibit feeling relaxed, receptive and receptive. as free circulation as the program itself.

Of particular interest is a series of self-portraits taken by the young participants, including a diptych of two smiling girls in an embrace. In the photo on the left, even without looking at the camera, the image turned out to be transparent. In the photo on the right, both girls are looking directly at the camera, but their faces are distorted by the burst of light. Neither is “good”, but both are great stand-alone scenes, capturing the nostalgic joy of flipping through an old family album and Baba being pleased that Molly decided to make a successful exit.

In a room flanking the back wall, a series of macabre prints are organized above canisters, but the centerpiece is an impressive, hand-painted – with brushes and sponges – reproduction of a sunflower painting from western Manitoba. Apartment complex at Broadway and Young. One part is blurred by green, where Ayoub says the participant is “angry” painting a tree covering the paint underneath.

Another highlight is the hand-painted cardboard re-creation by participants of the east-facing sign that faced Young Street at Pal Supermarket for years but was recently removed during renovations.

Made from cardboard, paint, and duct tape, it's a perfect piece of urban folk art, retaining the allure of the Pepsi-colored signs, from the time-worn numbers and permanently ingrained grammatical oddities like “BLNS PK CHOPS.” or “WE ARE OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK!”

Walking through the exhibit feels like walking down West Broadway, a testament to both Art City's influence and the neighborhood's anti-artistic sensibility.

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