Join us for a party to celebrate a new season of exhibitions at the Ryerson Image Centre, including:

True to the Eyes: The Howard and Carole Tanenbaum Photography Collection

Laura Henno: M’Tsamboro

Kodak Canada: The Early Years 1899-1939

Free and open to the public. Light refreshments and cash bar provided.

About the exhibitions:

True to the Eyes: The Howard and Carole Tanenbaum Photography Collection

This exhibition presents more than 200 photographs from the extraordinary and eclectic collection of the long-time Toronto couple. The Tanenbaums were among the first Canadian collectors to engage with the medium during its late 20th century rise to prominence; over time, they assembled one of the country’s great holdings of photography. True to the Eyes highlights a range of humanistic photographs in many genres, from anonymous vernacular imagery to masterworks by such notable photographers as Southworth & Hawes, William Notman, Ernest J. Bellocq, Brassaï, Lisette Model, Diane Arbus, Mary Ellen Mark, Jim Goldberg, Rafael Goldchain, and Edward Burtynsky. Through four decades of building their collection, the Tanenbaums have acquired images revealing aspects of family, wealth and poverty, civil rights, nature and the land, and Canadian life. The exhibition is accompanied by a richly-illustrated book published in partnership with Hirmer Verlag.

Laura Henno: M’Tsamboro

This silent, two-channel video by French artist Laura Henno was filmed in the Comoros archipelago near Mozambique, Africa, which has become the epicentre of a migration crisis. M’Tsamboro is an uninhabited islet where smugglers often disembark refugees under the false pretense that they have reached Mayotte, a French territory and sought-after destination. Conned and stranded, the migrants must then make additional payment to board boats operated by children. Taught to pilot the boats and avoid border patrols, these boys face all the perils of their illegal and dangerous activity. Henno’s quiet and poetic portraits contrast with the harshness and precariousness faced by her young subjects.

Kodak Canada: The Early Years 1899-1939

Drawing from Ryerson University’s Kodak Canada Corporate Archives and Heritage Collection, Kodak Canada: The Early Years 1899-1939 explores the development of the Kodak empire in Canada in the first half of the 20th century. In 1899, the company formally opened its doors in Toronto marking a pivotal moment in the global expansion of one of the world’s dominant manufacturers of photographic technology. The exhibition, accompanying publication and digital project present a selection of never-before-seen photographs of Kodak’s workers and buildings, original ads, corporate documents and ephemera.

Photo: Mary Ellen Mark, Three Acrobats, Vazquez Brothers Circus, Mexico City, Mexico, 1997 (printed 2005), gelatin silver print © Mary Ellen Mark. The Howard and Carole Tanenbaum Photography Collection