Images of dust tell the story of events on earth in the last 100 years

BY SELINA McCALLUM

A new photography exhibition will be at the Ryerson Image Centre from January 22^nd to April 5^th, 2020, and the collection is something you most likely have never seen before.

A Handful of Dust: From the Cosmic to the Domestic, curated by David Campany, features a selection of modern and contemporary images from the last 100 years, focusing on the visual representation of dust in photography.

There are more than sixty artworks a part of the exhibition. It touches on a wide range of subjects, including aerial reconnaissance, the American dustbowl, Mussolini’s final car journey, and the wars in Iraq.

A Handful of Dust showcases photographic works by renowned artists Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Walker Evans, Sophie Ristelhueber, Xavier Ribas, Jeff Wall, and many others, alongside anonymous press photographs, postcards, magazine spreads, and films.

Based in New York, Campany is one of the most acclaimed curators and critics. He has published widely and curated a number of important exhibitions, including Walker Evans: The Magazine Work and The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip in 2014.

A Handful of Dust was originally formulated for Le Bal in Paris in 2015, then travelled to Pratt Institute in New York in 2016, Whitechapel Gallery in London in 2017, and the California Museum of Photography in 2018, before making its way to Canada.

It was featured at The Polygon in North Vancouver where it brought out a large crowd on the opening night to hear Campany speak about the exhibition. Now it’s in Toronto, for a limited time only.

The exhibition begins with an iconic photograph by artist Man Ray. The picture is of a sheet of glass belonging to Marcel Duchamp covered in dust.

In an interview with The Polygon, Campany speaks about how he didn’t understand or like Ray’s image at first, but over the years saw it for what it was.

“This is an image that is about ruin and creativity and time and dirt, and maybe destruction,” said Campany.

He also discusses how the exhibition is open to interruption by anyone who views it. All the photos are from different decades, from the 1960s to the early 2000s, and show in detail how our society and environment has changed.

One photograph is of post-September 11 in New York of a solitary statue sitting on a bench, coated in grey dust and surrounded by rubble.

“Photographs are quite ambiguous, open-ended things. And if they are open-ended it is possible to connect them with other things,” said Campany in the interview.

Photography connects us to things and people all around us. We take photos of loved ones, places we’ve been and of ourselves. We look back at these photos’ years later and a wave of emotions resurfaces which may be the same emotion we felt at the time the picture was taken.

This exhibition is important because it allows us to see our world through something that is unimportant to most of us, dust. Particles that float around us every day, that we breathe in and out, but don’t even realize it’s there. Yet, they are able to tell a story.

Campany wants people to rethink about photography and what it means. He wants them to walk away with a new understanding and perspective of photography.

The Winter Exhibitions Opening Party at the Ryerson Image Centre takes place on Wednesday, January 22^nd, from 6 pm. to 8 pm.

Campany will be visiting the exhibition to be interviewed by Sara Knelman for the Curators in Conversation on Wednesday, January 29^th at 7 pm.

Tours will be available daily starting at 2:30 ps m.

This is a collection of photographs that presents a speculative history of the 20th century, addressing themes like the passage of time, the struggle toward modernity, ruin, and war — all symbolized by dust.