STEVEN ACKERMAN: "People and Music," February 8 to February 22, 2013, Gurevich Fine Art, Winnipeg, MB
1 of 6
"Floyd"
Steven Ackerman, "Floyd," 2012, photograph, 11" x 14".
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"Roddy Briggs"
Steven Ackerman, "Roddy Briggs," 2012, photograph, 11” x 14”.
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"Black shirt & Shades"
Steven Ackerman, "Black shirt & Shades," 2012, photograph, 11” x 14”.
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"Father & Son"
Steven Ackerman, "Father & Son," 2012, photograph, 11” x 14”.
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"Leslie Feist"
Steven Ackerman, "Leslie Feist," 2012, photograph, 11” x 14”.
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"Ousmane"
Steven Ackerman, "Ousmane," 2012, photograph, 11” x 14”.
STEVEN ACKERMAN, People and Music
February 8 to February 22, 2013
Gurevich Fine Art, Winnipeg , MB
By Kenton Smith
For his first show with Gurevich Fine Art in Winnipeg, photographer Steven Ackerman – whose work has appeared in The Onion, Vice and Border Crossings magazines — sought out the “remarkable mood that exists” at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, now in its 40th year. After returning from Brooklyn, where he moved after receiving his BFA from Syracuse University, Ackerman produced Nocturnal Landscapes in 2010. Using long exposures, he captured the “magical properties” of the festival’s nighttime side, depicting campers under the stars and other post-sunset illumination. He began daytime B&W portraits of campers in 2011, then shot performers such as Feist, Charles Bradley, Mary Gauthier and Winnipeg’s Chic Gamine last summer in the same stripped down fashion. “I’ve been doing portraits for years,” Ackerman says, “trying to visualize our humanity.” It’s the element he sought, for example, among Elvis impersonators and Hasidic Jewish kids in The Americas, a series shot throughout North and South America. Then there’s his ongoing B&W Portraits, featuring a range of Western Canadians. Regarding the folk festival, Ackerman says he apprehended from both attendees and performers the same “warm, wide-eyed enthusiasm” for the event, an oasis of time and place when festival goers re-connect with their fellows. The show is thus thematically continuous with Ackerman’s series, The Oasis, based at a Winnipeg public pool. Also recurring is the artist’s affinity for heightened reality, the ethereal and the beautiful, with his musician subjects almost glowing. Simultaneously, rarely do many stars agree to appear so candid and non-glamourized – which visually encapsulates, perhaps, the essence of folk music itself.
