Family
First group photography exhibit for Sherwood Park photographer
Guess what? From June 13 to July 16, 2022, your favourite Sherwood Park photographer (hehe, me!) is participating in her first group photography exhibit!
Documentary Family Photographers Worldwide (DFP) presents its third virtual photography exhibition, Community, in the DFP Transforming Perspectives Gallery, and I’m proud to say that one of my photographs is featured along with 49 others.
About the gallery and Community exhibition
Transforming Perspectives is a documentary photography virtual gallery giving photographers the chance to contribute their photographic voice as a means of communicating the importance of true family stories.
My Morning Meeting photograph was selected by exhibit jurors from over 600 submissions from 21 different countries. It also won the People’s Choice Award (a three-way tie with two other photographs) thanks to you, my amazing community! The imagery highlighted in the Community exhibit is of true stories of belonging and each photographer’s interpretation of what community means to them. 50 photographs by 41 photographers from 14 different countries are on display in a 3D exhibition on the DFP Gallery website.
The Morning Meeting photograph
My photograph features a woman getting ready for the day while having an online meeting with two friends. It’s about three artists with similar interests and points of view who joined forces to elaborate a project about sensitive topics, taboos and marginalized communities, among other things. This is one of their morning meetings, and I happened to photograph it during a photo session organized for a personal project I’ve been working on since the fall of 2021.
Carole Saint-Cyr of Radio Cité interviewed me on that topic. Listen to the interview (in French) here.
Other photographs from the exhibit
I had the chance to see other photographs from the Community exhibit in advance. Here are three that piqued my curiosity and for which I was able to get some background information.
Christina Hardcastle’s photograph
The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne was hosting a Triennial, featuring artists from all around the world. Christina Hardcastle’s husband had wandered off ahead when she walked into a room filled with this huge carpet made by Alexandra Kehayoglou. There was a mirror on the ceiling, and guests were welcome to take their shoes off and lay on the carpet. Christina laid down, and when she looked up, she realized she was surrounded by couples! She found it kind of fitting, because Melbourne as a community is all about art, love, and diverse culture.
Read more about Christina’s photo in the DFP Transforming Perspectives Gallery.
Ina Esch’s photograph
In the spring of 2020, Ina Esch wanted to document one of the visits of the kids at grandma’s house. Grandma is a loving, playful woman. She lives in her beautiful house surrounded by a giant garden. They were preparing the yard for spring and she prepared a little picnic for the kids. They wanted to have it in the beach chair, but underneath the cover. Grandma was delighted by this idea, and joined them.
Ina Esch noticed the light and was getting into position, where she was aiming for some body parts looking out of the cover. She loves a surrealistic, dreamlike look for her images. When grandmas’ hands started to come out as she was closing the cover, Ina found her image. She loved the detail of the hand with the red fingernails in an unconventional context.
You can read more about this award-winning photo in the DFP Gallery and on the Documentary Family Awards’ website.
Salonee Jain’s photograph
The Team that prays together stays together.
This photograph was captured in the year 2015 in the city of Mumbai. Every year in the month of August, the city celebrates a festival called Dahi Handi (meaning pot of curd). The festival involves communities hanging a clay pot filled with milk, curd and butter at a height of 3-4 building stories. Young men and women make a human pyramid and attempt to reach and break the pot.
You can read more about Salonee Jain’s photograph in the Community exhibit.
Find your Sherwood Park photographer’s image in the exhibit
You can see the exhibit’s 50 photographs, including Sherwood Park photographer Marie-Pierre Castonguay’s image (mine!) in the virtual exhibit, view the opening reception, get the exhibit catalogue and read about the artists’ images and their bios on the DFP Gallery website.
Thank you so much once again to all those who voted for my photo and made me a winner of the People’s Choice Award!
I'm Marie-Pierre, an easygoing mother of two and a documentary family photographer. I believe we can all learn and grow from other people's experiences. Real life stories help us relate to each other, open our minds and feel better about ourselves.
this blog is a collection of featured client stories, tips, and articles on various family related topics. I hope you will find some inspiration!
