On Thursday October 13th, our class had the pleasure of going to the Division Gallery for the Flash Forward Festival, which is a photography competition, put on by The Magenta Foundation. The festival involves emerging photographers from Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Before the event, we had a talk with Maryann Camilleri who is the founder of The Magenta Foundation. She took us around the exhibit and told us a bit about each photographer being presented. It was really great to learn about the photographers in the exhibit, and it gave us context in which to see their photographs. Each photographer had been inspired by different occurrences in their lives and they each had a different story to tell.
Maryann also generously gave us our own free copy of the Flash Forward 2016 book that was available to purchase at the event, which was fantastic! The book contains other artists that are part of Flash Forward but were not featured in this more limited exhibit. Looking through the book myself, it gave me a good idea of what the landscape of photography from around the world looks like right now.