(Silver), Exposed

Photography Students Launch Book, Eight Months in the Making

Fringe ArtsAlex Mcgill — Published March 29, 2011

(Silver), a collection of original photographs by graduating Concordia photo students, will drop this week.

The book is a compilation of their best works and will release this Thursday at a launch that will celebrate their eight months of publication work and ultimately, their time as Concordia students.

Production on this project has been a long, tedious, but rewarding process for the students involved, said Isabelle Landry, a fourth year photography student at Concordia. The group has organized bake sales, print sales, photos with Santa and more to raise money to cover production costs.

“The project was to create a book as [an] art object. We have privileged the overall quality and consistency of the book as a whole, rather than individual self-promotion. This was very important to us,” continued Landry.

The collective are also launching a website which will allow more and future photographs to be showcased and allow the artists to provide viewers with contact information.

(Silver) had been chosen as a name within the first month of school. The name is representative of the photography process. Landry explained that there is a more in-depth exploration of the name given in the forward of the book. “We chose the title (Silver) as this is the essential component in the negative film which allows for the image to be revealed in contact with light. This scientific term brings a connotation to the tradition of photography and the process of image-making as it was at its beginning.”

“The reason for putting (Silver) in parentheses is that we acknowledge the medium of photography (and its original process) to be the influence of all of our work,” she continued. “And yet also recognize that this process of image-making has much evolved with technology and that now students are much more open-minded and creative in the ways in which they approach photography.”

As for whether or not the publication successfully encapsulates her time spent in the Concordia photography program, Landry isn’t completely sure. “This is hard to say, as I don’t believe that one single project, whether a book, an exhibition, or both, really encapsulate all of our years at Concordia,” she said. “Studying in visual arts is much about developing an artistic vision, and trying to reach a point where our work really begins to say something, and has a coherent idea behind it. This is a really hard process, and hard to achieve.

“What we enjoy the most is that this book will now be permanent. It is an object that people get to walk away with, look at it many times, and reflect upon.”

Landry hopes that students outside of the photography, or even Fine Arts, departments at Concordia will find something to appreciate in the book. “As for the viewers,” she said, “we just hope that they will be able to appreciate the result, enjoy the texts and photographs, and possibly want to share it with someone else.”

(Silver) Book Launch / FOFA Gallery / Thurs. March 31 / 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m / Book is $10

This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 28, published March 29, 2011.