Malalai by Lana Slezic, 2005

Story by Sanita Fejzic

SAW Gallery’s latest exhibition, Bodies in Trouble, artfully blends photojournalistic work with performance art documentation, resulting in a multi-layered look at our human plight and the struggle for freedom captured over the past 50 years.

The exhibition runs from July 22 to October 3, with a reception and opening party this Thursday, (July 22), 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.

“It was important for me to frame these works as legitimate practices in contemporary art,” explains Stefan St-Laurent, curator of SAW Gallery and this exhibition. “Some photojournalistic works lack in imagination and try to be objective, but the works in this show are full of poetry and imagination.”

To bring this bold-yet-subtle vision to life, St-Laurent invited artists from local and international levels to fit the exhibition’s universal themes. While most of the artists are international, Ottawa-Gatineau’s Jackson Couse and Hélène Lefebvre are included. “Couse and Lefebvre are two local artists who are not necessarily known by their community. With Bodies in Trouble, I was able to showcase local photography works on par with international artists.”

If the Canadian, Spanish, French, American, and British photographers represented seem too disparate, don’t be fooled: they are linked by their powerful aesthetic and conceptual concerns.

“Performance art may look like photojournalism and vice versa,” St-Laurent says. “It’s only when you read the side panels that you get the full scope of the work. Images are full of contradictions.”

Kiss of Life by Rocco Morabito, for example, features two men in what appears to be a bizare romantic embrace atop a hydro pole, when in fact one is saving the life of the other with mouth-to-mouth resusitation. “That image is so powerful because it shows two types of strong love that can be shared between two men,” said St-Laurent. When the image appeared in 1968, “it probably became socially acceptable when people found out it wasn’t sexual,” speculated St-Laurent.

Morabito, who was on his way to another assignment when he chanced upon the scene of the mishap, won the Pulitzer Prize for Kiss of Life and the photo is a centrepiece of the SAW exhibition. “I didn’t want to present this exhibition without this picture,” St-Laurent said. “People who come in will be able to create their own narrative with this work—romance or resuscitation—and that echoes the spirit of the entire exhibition.”

Also open to interpretation are photographic essays in the show that appear like spontaneously made photographs but actually took many years to produce. “Alex Webb, Cristina García Rodero: they all work in that way,” says St-Laurent. “These are artists who investigate and get involved in the communities in which they produce their work.” That’s what separates them from commissioned photojournalism according to this curator.

Paul M. Smith from London, England is a good example. “He was one of the first artists, beginning in in 1996, to produce elaborate photo-montages. In his Artists Rifle series, Smith is playing all the characters in the images. It looks like bands of people participating in war scenes, but it is all him.” Similarly in the photograph Burial, three soldiers, all actually Smith, appear to be burying a fourth Smith alive.

Bodies in Trouble is also enriched with artists from multiple generations and perspectives. St-Laurent has made sure that the contemporary artists are in dialogue with historical works, allowing us to see the trajectory of both. “Smith’s work is very interesting, particularly in relationship to Yves Klein’s Leap Into The Void,” St-Laurent  says. “That image was seen as an attempted suicide, but it was one of the early montages—one of the first instances of photo doctoring.”

Though he is never one to shy away from political weight or darkness of theme, St-Laurent remains an optimist, pointing out that he “was pretty adamant about choosing images that had some sort of hopeful outcome to them,” images that allows us to dream of a positive resolution for the people afflicted by wars and situations of violence.

“We always try to be politically relevent and this show in particular offers a lot of politicised content for viewers,” said St-Laurent. “We’re in the nation’s capital, where the large institutions are playing it safe, so it’s hard for people to see this kind of work.”

“I take our liberty here at SAW Gallery very seriously and I never want to self-censor merely because we might offend someone or create a media controversy.” And local viewers of challenging contemporary and historical work should be grateful for it.

Burial by Paul M. Smith, 1997

Leap into the Void, artistic action of Yves Klein, photo by Harry Shunk-John Kender

Hélène Lefebvre performing Mère Courage by Jackson Couse, 2009

The Kiss of Life by Rocco Morabito, 1968

Channel Two News, Monmouth, New Jersey, Greta Pratt, 1991