Since my book was released three years ago most of the discussion around this project has been related to the downfall of the photographic industry and the future life of photographic materials. Is film better than digital? Will Kodak and the other photographic companies continue to produce film in the future? While I’ve enjoyed the dialogue and ensuing debate about these topics I never really intended for this work to be focused strictly on technology. And while I decided to include historical texts in the book – it was never my intention that it would serve as a comprehensive history of the industry. For me, creating this work was more about understanding the changing nature of my medium – both as an art form and as a tool with myriad applications in contemporary society.

A year after the publication of the book I created an exhibition (Gaelle Morel, Curator) adding new analogue and digital works to accompany my large format photographs.The goal of the exhibition was to bring the work into a larger conversation about photography’s digital present. This exhibition has now been shown at five venues in Canada, the US and Europe and currently is part a wonderful new group exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery titled, Residue: The Persistence of the Real. In addition to my own, the exhibit includes work  by artists Stan Douglas, Babak Golkar, Geoffrey James, Brian Jungen & Duane Linklater, Catherine Opie and Amie Siegel.

Through this show, curator Grant Arnold, explores photography’s new relationship to realism in the 21st century and how the medium has been reshaped not only by new technologies but our new responses to photo-based media. Arnold has done an amazing job with the exhibition and worked with Black Dog Publishers on a catalogue which will be released in early September.