Track Records: Trains and Contemporary Photography

Since its invention the train has fascinated artists, and nowhere has this been more apparent than in its links to photography. This exhibition examines how and why the image of the train continues to play a role in contemporary photography. The camera and the train are two great machines of vision, able to transport the passenger/viewer to a totally different place. The themes explored include: crime and passion, symbols of power, crashes and ruins in the landscape, notions of junction and journey, and symbols of sexual activity. This exhibition about trains and photography explores some of the links between these two great developments of the 19th century and focuses on the use of railroad imagery in contemporary photography. Each of the twelve artists in the exhibition makes use of some aspect of the train's enormous symbolic potential to create their unique statements. 

Artists: 

Vancouver artist Roy Arden combines sheets of copper with historical images of train derailments in a series of diptychs which probe colonialism's failures. 

London, Ontario artist Ron Benner uses a single newspaper image as the basis for 6 huge tar strewn photomurals which stand as testament to the memory of friends killed in a train crash. 

London, Ontario artist Murray Favro plays with the rules of perspective by creating a 3-dimensional section of railway track with converging lines. 

Toronto artist Vera Frenkel combines photographs, drawing and sound in an installation which uses the train journey as a metaphor for inner thoughts and imaginative journeys. 

Montreal artist Angela Grauerholz's large Cibachrome photographs reflect the sense of the reverie and introspection that train travel often occasions. 

New York area photographer 0. Winston Link's black and white photographs document the end of the steam locomotive era in the Shenandoah Valley and Appalachian Mountains. 

Toronto artist Louise Noguchi uses a series of large black and white photographs to explore the strange workings of fate and to question the forced relocation of Japanese Canadians during World War II. 

Seattle artist Glenn Rudolph's large black and white photographs document the remains of abandoned railway lines. 

Montreal artist David Tomas uses both photography and a website to investigate the impact the train has had on our perception of time and space. 

Toronto artist Douglas Walker marks the surface of a photograph of a locomotive with scratches, folds and stains, thereby obscuring the photograph's capacity for documentation. 

Toronto artist Kathryn Walter combines an historic image of a train station with a modem day panorama of the station in ruins to question Western ideals of progress and development. 

New York and Los Angeles based artist James Welling explores the contentions of railroad photography with his series of black and white photographs. 

Video artists: Frank Vitale, Paul Wong, Richard Fung, Gitamjali, François Girard & David Rimmer. 

Exhibition curated by Marnie Fleming. Video program organized by Su Ditta. Sound/Music program developed by Tom Fleming. Organized by Oakville Galleries and circulated by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa