Marie Heintzman Photography

A Featured Exhibition, CONTACT Photography Festival, Lonsdale Gallery, Toronto

I am honoured to have been invited to be part of this exciting international, group exhibition, with over 90 artists. Five of my Timeless Portfolio, toned-silver gelatin prints will be shown.

Highlighting over 300 pieces of traditional darkroom and experimental photography this exhibition shines a light on the richness of techniques and creative opportunities offered by manual photographic development. Photographers from across the globe are assembled in this large-scale salon installation. This exhibition surveys a wide variety of historical and experimental techniques, including: pinhole, tintype, glass plate, cyanotype, lithography, gum bichromate, platinum palladium, photogravure, tri-colour, gelatine silver, salted paper prints, contact prints, ambrotype, mordançage, vandyke, lumen prints, photograms, polaroid transfers, and more!

The root of photography dates back to early antiquity. The word ‘photography’ comes from Greek ‘drawing with light’. In a world saturated with social media and a constant flood of digital images, darkroom photography is experiencing a renaissance. While purists have always believed in the preeminence of analogue photography, renewed mainstream appreciation for images from the pre-digital era signals an exciting new chapter in contemporary photographic practices.

In the words of Ansel Adams, “the negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score and the print the performance.” The mediation of the artists’ hand gives photographs their unique expressive power. The alchemy and magic of the darkroom allows artists the freedom to experiment and transform images into a true artistic masterpiece. While technology can mimic the end result of these processes, it can never fully recreate the energy, artistic depth, and tangible quality of manual photographic development.