CAPIC Legends
The pieces presented below from each of the Legends will be showcased in the 2024 Xposé exhibition.
Xposé 2024 CAPIC Legends
- Gail Harvey
- George Whiteside
- Ian Campbell
- John Bladen Bentley
- Nancy Shanoff
- Ruth Kaplan
- Shin Sugino
- Skip Dean
- Taffi Rosen
- Chris Gordaneer
- Douglas Bradshaw
- Russell Monk
- Edward Burtynsky
- Edward Gajdel
CAPIC Legends is generously sponsored by our partner:
‘Best in Show’ Award sponsor
Gail Harvey
“Gail Harvey’s work focusses on people. As Harvey captures them, their variety and starkly insinuating modes of expression are as fascinating as any of those larger-than-life characters who entice and engage us from the wide screen.” The Globe and Mail
“Harvey’s superstar portraits more often than not, are unexpectedly candid. It is easy to see why she’s won international recognition as one of Toronto’s top talents.”
Gail Harvey is a world-renowned photographer and a multi award- winning film director. She branched out to film after an illustrious career as a photographer. As a film director, she was mentored by Norman Jewison, Wim Wenders and Arthur Penn, and was the third woman ever hired as a staff photojournalist at United Press International wire service.
George Whiteside
George Whiteside’s post-secondary education has included Sheridan College and Ontario College of Art and Design. He had some very successful shows even as a student and after graduating from OCAD in 1979, he started his career as an artist exhibiting regularly in galleries across Canada and internationally. Also in 1979, he was a founding member of YYZ gallery, an artist-run center that still thrives today. This was followed by solo shows at Jane Corkin Gallery, Spin Gallery and most recently Fred Torres Gallery in N.Y. as well as group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Power Plant, Stephen Bulger Gallery and recently at the Waterfall Mansion in N.Y. to name a few. His work is in the permanent collection of the AGO, Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography.
By 1981, commercial work began taking up the majority of George’s time, contributing to every major magazine in Canada as well as Interview, Esquire, Vogue, Texas Monthly and Gourmet in the U.S. He has also shot major ad campaigns for Holt Renfrew, The Bay, Eatons, Jacob, Roots, Indigo, the Royal Ontario Museum and many more, as well as a commissioned art series for Ikea. Commissioned portraits include Natasha Richardson, Julian Schnabel, Atom Egoyan, Sarah Polley, Margaret Atwood, K.D. Lang, Rush, Bruce Cockburn, Genie Bouchard, Karim Rashid, Jamie Oliver, David Byrne etc. His work has been recognized with more than 30 awards from the National Magazine Awards, Applied Arts Magazine, Communication Arts Magazine, Society of Publication Designers and Art Directors Club.
Since 2009 the focus has returned to the fine art world. In 2015, George co-founded Gray Area Magazine.
Ian Campbell
“Relentless attention to Detail” is a quote from an article about my work that is at the heart of my photography.
I search to find the extraordinary within the ordinary in my photographs, both in the studio and on my travels. The images are graphic and devoid of clutter, creating a sense of order from chaos.
For the past 40 years, I have worked as an Advertising and Fine Art photographer and produced many Internationally award-winning Ad campaigns. I worked with Westside Studio for 25 years, and now in my home studio in the East End.
In 2016 I held a Retrospective Show of personal work shot in Shanghai, Seoul, Chicago and Toronto. Since then, I have concentrated on Fine Art Photography as well as Custom Printmaking.
Limited Edition Fine Art Prints are available and printed by the Artist.
John Bladen Bentley
John Bladen Bentley makes photographs. Old school. Photographs, real photographs, that cannot be willed or invented. He is drawn to the world seen from the side of his eye – fleeting ephemeral spots of time and colour.
“I move on foot through an unknowable landscape attempting to make visible the aesthetic value hidden in the most unlikely of places. I seek out the obscure, the less obvious – the minor and the hidden, the tentative and the ephemeral – things so subtle and evanescent they are almost invisible at first glance. The photographs are about a kind of beauty that’s imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
My work is about exploration and discovery. I am open and receptive with a perspective that likens to childhood naivety. The photographs rely not only on seeing, but also on sensing the potential – of possibility. The psychographic space speaks to me and I listen. This sensing has me look deeper for a photograph that can be pulled from the chaos of disparate elements. It is less what I see and more what I make others see that matters. That is really what the work is about.”
In 1993, disillusioned by the competitive world of commercial photography, and a desire to get back to his photographic roots, Bentley closed up his studio in Toronto and armed with an 8 x 10 Deardorff camera, headed off to the highlands of central Mexico. For Bentley, it would be the poetry of chance. Random brushings with a world where he saw all things as equal.
Bentley processed his sheets of film in bathrooms or on desolate roadsides inside his renovated twenty-one passenger bus, giving him a direct dialogue with the work.
When Bentley returned to Canada, he realized there were no conventional colour print processes that could capture the depth, the colour, the richness nor the intensity of his new photographs. Before his commercial career, he’d made dye-transfer prints, a difficult and challenging process – the king of colour processes – but Eastman Kodak had discontinued the materials he would need to make them. Researching an alternative, he was led to the rarest of all photographic print processes in the history of photography – the colour carbon transfer print – the ancestor of dye transfer prints. Colour carbon transfer prints were theoretically even more beautiful than dye-transfer and even more difficult to make.
This intricate and ultra-laborious process would demand as much effort and commitment as his photographic expeditions in Mexico, and much more. Thus, began over three decades of research and development to resurrect a printmaking process that had virtually lain on the dust heap of photographic history for over a century.
Bentley has lectured at OCAD, Toronto Metropolitan University and the University of Guanajuato, Mexico. His work has been exhibited at Heilongjiang Art Museum, Harbin, China, Verve Gallery, New Mexico, John Stevenson Gallery, NYC, National Gallery of Canada, Agfa Canada, New Media Portfolio Corporation, Beckett Fine Art, Toronto, TurQuoise Gallery, Toronto, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, B.C. and in numerous collections in Canada, USA, Mexico, Spain, Portugal and Poland.
Represented by Beckett Fine Art.
Nancy Shanoff
“What a journey it’s been!” says Nancy Shanoff, reflecting on her varied and exciting career.
Nancy Shanoff is an internationally award-winning commercial photographer whose clients included, Molson’s; Labatt’s; Alexander Keith; Moosehead Beer; Bright’s wine; Innisfil Winery; Sprint; Northern Telecom; Bank of Montreal; McDonalds; Kraft; Proctor and Gamble; Ford; Chrysler; Toronto Life and Saturday Night Magazine. Even at the height of her career, Nancy made time to teach photography and guest lecture.Following her retirement from commercial photography, Nancy combined her lifelong passions for ethnographic portraiture and travel. Her adventures include sojourns to Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, Rwanda, New Zealand, and Israel.
AWARDS: D&AD Toronto& London; Marketing Awards; NY Film Award; One Show; TDC -Tokyo Design Club
Ruth Kaplan
Ruth Kaplan is a documentary-based photographer whose work explores a variety of themes such as the social behaviour of bathers in communal hot springs and bathhouses, participants in rituals of spirituality and the transient status surrounding refugees seeking asylum in Canada while living in shelters in Buffalo, Detroit, Toronto and Fort Erie. More recently she has completed an exploration of the now-closed, Roxham Road border-crossing straddling New York and Quebec where asylum-seekers attempted to enter Canada. The body of work incorporates soundscapes from the site, interviews with asylum-seekers, and photographs of the diverse forces intersecting at this tiny spot. Aside from exhibiting this work, she is currently assembling a book from this project.
In addition to an extensive background in editorial photography, Kaplan has exhibited widely with work in major Canadian and international collections and publications. She is a recipient of numerous grants and awards and currently teaches at OCAD University and Toronto Metropolitan University. Her first book, Bathers, was recently published by Damiani.
Shin Sugino
Born in Osaka, Japan, at 19 he emigrated to Canada to study Photography, Illustration and Cinema at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto. (1968-71) He began his career as a Fine Art Photographer, supplementing it as a Lecturer in the Fine Arts Department of Toronto’s York University. From 1980 – 1986, he narrowed his focus, specializing as a Freelance Stills Photographer for feature film production in Canada, U.S.A., Spain and Austria. In 1986 he began his extraordinarily successful advertising photography studio, Sugino Studio. He pioneered digital shooting and imaging in Toronto in 1995. Beyond fine art and commercial photography, he has expanded his repertoire to include directing live action TV commercials.
Shin’s editorial work has appeared in Toronto Life, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Camera Canada, Camera Mainichi, and in the Time-Life Photography Book Series. Some of his commercial clients include: General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, Mazda, Nissan, Toyota, Lexus Kodak, Fuji, Nikon, Canon, Telus, Panasonic, Guinness, Molson, Labatt and Tim Horton’s.
Shin has won countless awards internationally. He has claimed advertising gold at Cannes in 1998 and 2002 and Cyber Gold in 2006. Other acclaim has come from The One Show, The Advertising & Design Club of Canada, Applied Arts, Photo District News, Communication Arts and Luerzer’s Archive. His work is represented in collections of the National Film Board, National Archives, Ontario Arts Council, Banff School of Fine Art and many private collections. In 2018 he was awarded Les Usherwood Life Time Achievement Award by Advertising Club Of Toronto.
Despite the escalating demands on his time, Shin has never forsaken his personal work; the last several years have been devoted to the wet collodion process, platinum print and photopolymer gravure.
Skip Dean
Skip Dean has solidified his position as a master of his craft. Specializing in capturing the essence of food, pharmaceuticals, and visual storytelling. And his images have graced the pages of renowned magazines and publications.
His exceptional eye for detail and innate ability to create stunning compositions have propelled his work to the forefront of the industry. After winning numerous awards throughout his career of 40 years of unparalleled success.
Skip was asked to share his expertise and became a distinguished teacher at the prestigious Ontario College of Art and Design University working with communication design students. Now, at the peak of his career, Skip has seamlessly transitioned into the realm of fine art gallery photography, using old Alternative techniques such as Tri-colour GUM Bichromate and GUM over palladium, leaving a lasting impression on the international art scene in his home base of Toronto, Canada.
Taffi Rosen
Possessing an uncanny eye and a unique artistic sensibility, award-winning photographer Taffi Rosen-Laing imbues each photographic effort with her unmistakable signature. Whether it’s shooting for fashion, editorial or advertising, some of the most recognizable names in the world have benefited from an artist who insists on producing images that defy convention, command attention and serve the project. In recognition of her startling originality, her work has been showcased in numerous exhibitions and featured in many prestigious international publications, including a number in her native Canada.
But still, photography isn’t her only medium. Rosen worked as a videographer for Canada’s Arts Channel, Bravo! from 1995 to 2002 and branched out into filmmaking in 2004 to produce the insightful, critically acclaimed interview series In the Mind of… now in its second season on the Bravo! and Biography Canadian television networks. Also in 2005, Laing launched the independent Toronto production company Redhead Entertainment Inc. to produce videos and photography for cultural and corporate clients including the City of Toronto and The University of Toronto, In 2011 she moved to NY working exclusively for Thumper Productions where she produced and developed videos, and photographs for Musicians, Artists, and Authors.
Chris Gordaneer
Chris Gordaneer’s strong, stylistic look is one he has established as iconically his own. With an innate ability to craft narratives that resonate deeply, Chris’s work evokes a wide spectrum of emotions. Through his decades of experience, Chris has collaborated with globally renowned brands on projects that have taken him around the world. Chris can comfortably navigate any scenario, viewing potential challenges as exciting opportunities, especially when working with remote locations. His work is often described as “epic”, whether capturing a mountaineer mid-journey, or elevating an everyday moment between family. Chris is well known for his work with animals, particularly in his iconic Telus campaigns. While animals are notoriously unpredictable, Chris thrives by making the most of the unexpected. Whether in studio or on locations ranging from a dairy farm, an ice rink, to the open road, Chris is able to effortlessly adapt and excel.
Douglas Bradshaw
Doug Bradshaw is an award-winning photographer passionate about food. His work is seen internationally on package design, advertisements, best-selling cookbooks, and on the pages of food magazines. His purpose as a photographer is to work with clients in creating arresting images that will stand out and differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive market.
For more than 35 years, Doug has been committed to all things culinary. “Shooting food is like performance art. It’s very fluid, very temporary. I look for that decisive moment when everything is at its peak. It’s one of the few experiences I have found that involves all of the senses. To me, it’s very exciting.”
Russell Monk
Russell Monk has been photographing one thing or another, and often something else – for over 40 years and feels that his direction and or lack of it has been his most consistent (if in fact he has one?) strength. One might even say his lack of “focus” has led to the eclectic and restless search for the images he makes. And that at times he feels that instead of imagined they are “yearned” and more often than not has just trusted his intuition. Even when he’s not really sure what he’s doing?
Russell spends his time between Toronto and Mexico and sometimes elsewhere. He is presently plotting, searching and even yearning for a new project to engage him whole heartedly. Russell is represented by Toronto’s fabulous Cardinal Gallery.
Edward Burtynsky
Exploring the Residual Landscape
Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set
course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.
These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire – a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.
https://www.edwardburtynsky.com
Edward Gajdel
My work as a photographer is deeply rooted in the exploration of identity and the human condition. Every portrait is not simply an image, but a conversation—a collaboration between subject and artist. It is through this intimate process that I seek to reveal the unseen layers of an individual’s essence, capturing the beauty, power and grace that lie beneath the surface.
I am fascinated by the way light interacts with form, how it can sculpt and soften, illuminate and obscure. Light is my language, one that speaks of time, emotion, and place. Whether working in natural or constructed environments, I aim to create images that invite viewers to pause, reflect, and engage with the nuances of the human experience.
Great photography is like breath—natural, vital, and fleeting. As each breath captures a moment of life, photography freezes a fleeting instant, allowing us to pause and savour its beauty. Both are essential, grounding us in the present while connecting us to something timeless.
My work is a testament to the power of authenticity and the importance of storytelling. Through my lens, I aim to honour the complexity of each individual, celebrating both our common humanity and our unique differences.
Honourable mention to Ron Silverstein
