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Comix News & culture
in Montreal and greater Canada

21.7.04
Gallery captures the camera in comics
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Co: Bryan Munn/Canadian Comic Art Foundation

Comic books, or more specifically the characters that inhabit them, are more popular than ever.

Even unflinchingly realistic comic book heroes, like Harvey Pekar from American Splendor, have managed to carve out a place in the echelons of popular cinema somewhere close -- but not quite beside -- bigwigs like Spiderman and Superman. Nonetheless, it seems there is a comic book hero or antihero for everyone.

North Vancouver's Presentation House Gallery's (PHG) latest exhibit, Just Press Their Button: A History of Photography in the Comics, is currently showing another sort of character that reappears in comic books throughout the ages: the camera. The idea for the show came from a 1989 Photo Life magazine article by photographer Denes Devenyi, PHG curator Bill Jeffries says. In the article, Devenyi explored not only the wide range of photo-related material in comics history, but introduced a key notion explored in this exhibition -- that photography's popularity might partially come from its depiction in comics, Jeffries explains.

The material is a mix of graphic artifacts and prints. Each one tells a unique tale about photography, photographers and their instruments and the evolution of each. The exhibition is comprised on three separate but related parts. The east room contains drawings mainly from the 1900s, a time when cameras were much harder to use. One had to actually know something about the chemistry, which made capturing photographic moments challenging, Jeffries explains. This portion of the show takes a playful look at how people historically perceived the rather new and challenging act of "taking a picture." -->>



max@Sequential : 11:19:30 AM
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