14 must-see shows at Contact Photography Festival 2021
14 must-see shows at Contact Photography Festival 2021
The 25th annual photo festival s shows will roll out across public spaces and galleries throughout the year By Kelsey Adams and Kevin Ritchie
May 6, 2021
Contact Photography Festival is celebrating 25 years of taking over Toronto billboards, building facades and galleries with photo- and image-based art. Since galleries remain closed due to pandemic restrictions, this year the festival is switching things up.
With more time to prepare than the 2020 edition, there was a concerted effort to bolster virtual exhibitions and outdoor programming. No longer working in the confines of the month of May, Contact will roll out shows into the fall to overlap with the city’s Year of Public Art initiative in September.
Jeff Bierk takes friendship to new heights at Contact Photo Fest
Jeff Bierk takes friendship to new heights at Contact Photo Fest
The portrait photographer celebrates a 10-year friendship with collaborator Jimmy James Evans in a photo series that subverts power dynamics By Kelsey Adams
Courtesy of Jeff Bierk/Photo by Micheal Cullen
In The Absence Of Paradise, In The Absence Of Virtue (2019), oil on photograph on panel (48”x72”).
FOR JIMMY by Jeff Bierk and Jimmy James Evans as part of
CONTACT PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL. At Dupont and Perth and Dupont and Emerson. May 1-30. contactphoto.com.
At the corners of Dupont and Perth and Dupont and Emerson stand two odes to friendship. For Jimmy, a series of two billboards that are part of the Contact Photography Festival, is first and foremost an outpouring of love from Toronto photographer Jeff Bierk to his close friend, Jimmy James Evans. In one portrait, Evans’s royal blue hair is scattered in the wind, his eyes pierci