_Bio Chuck Samuels holds a master’s degree in fine arts from Concordia University. His photographs and videos have been shown in many solo and group exhibitions in Canada and abroad, including in Amsterdam, New York, Paris, Berlin, Budapest and Mexico City. His work can be found in numerous public and private collections, including those of the National Gallery of Canada, the George Eastman Museum and the Worcester Art Museum. From 2002 to 2014, he was director of Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, an international biennale of contemoprary photography (today known as Momenta).
_Approach Photography is Chuck Samuels’ means of expression but also his topic. Since the first exhibition of his work, he has interrogated the ways in which photography and — to a lesser extent cinema — does or does not function. His presence in his work is a central element of his practice: by turning the camera on himself, Samuels directs our attention to the very nature of photography, thereby sharing his fascination and profound distrust of this medium.
_Project In the early years of the twentieth century, there was a significant surge of immigrants into North America, including many people fleeing religious, racial and/or political persecution - among them were Chuck Samuels' grandparents. Through the prism of his family history, the project Other Photography will explore photographic archives of the wave of immigration of which his ancestors were a part, as well as the way in which these images have contributed to shaping public perception of otherness.
Samuels will work from a series of historical photographs which he will modify by insinuating his own image into them. His goal with this manipulation is to give rise to critical thinking about these images’ theatricality and mode of presentation, while at the same time interrogating the involvement of the photographic medium in constructing the concept of the “other”.
Photo credits : Gabor Szilasi
