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Draft:Art Perry (photographer and writer)

  • Comment: Hi there! Why did you add off topic material. I've seen some of these in the "Early years" section. Articles are supposed to stay focused on the subject without going into unnecessary details and out of focus material. Toadette (Let's talk together!) 08:44, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
Art Perry
Born07 October 1948 (age 75)
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
NationalityCanadian
Known forphotography, writing and education
Notable workThe Tibetans, Viking Studio, New York
Awards$50,000 Roloff Beny Photography Book Award

Arthur Ralph Perry (born 07 October 1948) is a Canadian writer, photographer, and educator. Known for his documentary photography, Art Perry's publication The Tibetans[1] received the $50,000 Roloff Beny Photography Book Award.[2] Perry also received the Artmagazine (Toronto) award for the best newspaper or journal article on art for his Vancouver Province review of artist Robert Rauschenberg's exhibition of Captiva Island works.[3] Grady Mitchell in Scout Magazine noted, "Whether it's a titanic personality like Werner Herzog or a monk in a remote Tibetan village, Art (Perrry) approaches his subjects the same way. He strives to distill on film the inherent dignity in every person."[4]

Early years

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Art Perry was born in 1948 in Canada's capital city Ottawa, Ontario. Perry has two siblings, Stephen (b. 1943) and Mary (b.1945, d. 1945), who died shortly after her birth.

In 1959 Perry developed an incapacitating illness of continual vertigo, due to the onset of encephalitis and Ménière's Disease. He was admitted to Montreal's Neurological Institute[5] for a year under the care of noted neurosurgeon Dr. Wilder Penfield, who at that time was labeled 'the greatest living Canadian.'[6]

From an early age, Art Perry wanted to be a cartoonist and collected Mad (magazines), copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland and Walt Kelly's Pogo books. In 1958, a year before the onset of Perry's vertigo, The Ottawa Journal newspaper held a contest to draw the purple people eater from Sheb Wooley's popular song. A cartoon drawn by 10-year-old Perry won the contest and his drawing was published in the newspaper. Later, in 1964-1965, Perry became the resident cartoonist (at age 15) on CJOH TV's teen dance show Saturday Date, where on April 24. 1965, Perry presented his caricatures of The Rolling Stones to the band backstage during their YM-YWCA Auditorium show in Ottawa.[7] Perry's interest in cartooning continued in the late-1960s and early-1970s when he was the political cartoonist for the Carleton University student newspaper The Charlaton.[8]

Academia

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In 1972, following his graduation from Carleton University with a Bachelor of Arts (Magnum cum Laude) majoring in literature and art history, Perry worked as a lecturer of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Canada. The following year he backpacked throughout Europe and settled for three months on the Greek island of Corfu in the small hillside village of Pelekas. While in Pelekas, the Aegean light and village's unfamiliar but lively Greek culture initiated Perry into his lifelong love of documentary photography. Returning to Canada in 1973, Perry entered Graduate Studies in art history at the University of British Columbia where he was employed as a teaching assistant for undergraduate students. At this time Perry began work as the editorial cartoonist for the Vancouver Province newspaper, a job that quickly shifted into Perry becoming the Province's full-time art critic,[9] a position he kept from 1974 to 1995.

In 1977, while Perry was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia, he was hired as a full-time lecturer of contemporary art history at the Vancouver School of Art (now the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where he remained until retiring in 2023 as an Associate Professor Emeritus. Perry's professorial areas of research and lecturing were Beat Generation poetry,[10] Space Age and Cold War popular culture, documentary photography, and the adaption of literature into film. One popular seminar Perry developed shortly before his retirement was based on Rebecca Solnit's writings in A Field Guide to Getting Lost.[11]

Photography

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Art Perry is best known for his photographic work.[4] His first solo exhibition was in March 1989 at the University of British Columbia Fine Art Gallery (now the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery.[12]) More recently Perry's 'black-and-white portrait of singer Lou Reed lying on the floor with his dog Lolabelle' in his arms[13] was exhibited at The Polygon Gallery and at the Red Gate Arts Society.[13][14] As John Mackie[15] noted in theVancouver Sun, 'Yes. Art Perry has a photo of Lou Reed - the man who wrote rock classics like Heroin and Walk on the Wild Side - nuzzling on the ground with a little terrier.'[16] This same Perry portrait of Reed with Lolabelle was placed at the end of Laurie Anderson's Oscar-nominated film Heart of a Dog. Perry's exhibition 'Hip! Portraits of Cool,' which included the Reed photo, was shown in both Montreal and Vancouver, Reviewing Perry's 'Hip!' exhibition in the Vancouver Sun, John Mackie said, 'The 46 counterculture icons in the show range from Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson to Dizzy Gillespie, Werner Herzog, Allen Ginsberg[17] and David Hockney. It may be the only photo show in history where Lady Di hangs between Keith Richards and Nick Cave.'[18]

Commenting on Perry's series of counterculture photographs of Joe Strummer, Patti Smith, Shane MacGowan, Marianne Faithfull, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Rudolf Nureyev, and Louise Bourgeois, one critic observed, 'Art Perry is not only one of Canada's best-kept underground secrets, he's also a bonafide bohemian guru. ... Perry's silver print portraits of counterculture icons carry an empathy and deep passionate commitment to creative bohemian outlaws.'[19] Much of Perry's connection with the artists and musicians he photographs comes via his expertise as a cultural historian, and also via his personality. Reviewer Grady Mitchell noted that Perry's 'personality lends his images vitality, makes them both urgent and contemplative, whether he's freezing a rambunctious group of Irish youth or a making a quiet portrait of Nick Cave, smoking at his piano with a half-eaten ham sandwich in front of him.[20] His easy nature disarms people, frees them to relax.'[4]

Perry has created extensive multi-year photographic projects, most notably concerning the cultures of Tibetans and the Irish. Perry's Viking Studio publication The Tibetans is the result of five years travelling to Himalayan Buddhist and nomadic communities in Tibet, Ladakh, and Nepal. Commenting on Perry's work, Vancouver's Capture Photography Festival said, 'Perry has paralleled this photographing and writing about oppressed world communities with his ongoing religious belief in and valuing of the holiness within outsider culture ... culture that goes counter to the mainstream.'[21] The Washington Post included Perry's publication The Tibetans in its best books of the year,[22] and Perry gave lectures on his book at New York's Tibet House and at Washington DC's Smithsonian Institute. Subsequently, the Smithsonian acquired a number of Perry's Tibetan photographs for its permanent collection. Robert Thurman, Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies, Columbia University, wrote in his introduction to The Tibetans, 'These beautiful photographs of Tibet and Tibetans could only have emerged from the eye and hand and heart of a man who made every effort to share the life and feelings of the extraordinary individuals who live on the highest plateau on earth.'[23]

Perry's Irish portrait series, entitled Facing Ireland, is the result of his lifetime intrigue with Irish culture. Perry's grandmother was from Belfast and she worked as a seamstress outfitting the staterooms on the Titanic before its 1912 sailing. The Facing Ireland series was exhibited at Vancouver's now-defunct SMASH Modern Art Gallery, of which one reviewer commented, 'Art Perry's Irish portraits are not touristy reaffirmations of the quaintness and picturesque verdure of Ireland. ... The people in Art's photos, the Irish, come from a cross-section of Travellers, clergy, farmers who have lived on their land for five generations, artists, writers, long-rooted manor owners, kids playing, seventy-year-old cabinetmakers, and small-town dancers.'[24]

Philosophy

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Art Perry has a Zen-like[25] nonintrusive aesthetic when taking his photographs. He does not use added lights or encourage posing, preferring to experience encounters as they naturally unfold. 'It's like jazz,' Perry says. 'You take the spontaneity of the moment, but you put in all the discipline and the awareness you get from the study of what you're doing.'[4] Perry labels the philosophical stance behind his black-and-white, often blurred or gritty photographs, as a 'poetic position.' 'You're not given everything," he explains. "A poem is just a few words, and those words are just black scatterings on a page. You read that and all of a sudden you fill it in. It's making the momentary monumental. Poetry is your personal epiphany of experience.'[4]

References

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  1. ^ Perry, Art (1999). The Tibetans. New York: Viking Studio. ISBN 0-670-88645-9.
  2. ^ "Tibetan photography book takes $50,000 prize". The Globe and Mail. 2000-05-11. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  3. ^ "Province critic wins award". The Vancouver Province. September 30, 1979. pp. A12.
  4. ^ a b c d e "VANCOUVERITES | 10 Minutes With Art Perry, Emily Carr Instructor & Famed Photographer". Scout Magazine. 2015-07-13. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  5. ^ "The Neuro". The Neuro. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  6. ^ "Today Is Pioneering Neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield's Birthday". TIME. 2018-01-26. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  7. ^ todayinottawashistory (2021-04-24). "The Rolling Stones". Today in Ottawa's History. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  8. ^ "About Us". The Charlatan, Carleton's independent newspaper. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  9. ^ Mackie, John (May 16, 2012). "'Hip! Portraits of Cool.' focuses on four decades of counterculture icons". The Vancouver Sun.
  10. ^ Foundation, Poetry (2024-02-28). "The Beat Poets". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  11. ^ "A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit: 9780143037248 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  12. ^ "Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery". Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  13. ^ a b "Dog Days has the goods to get tails wagging, as Polygon Gallery goes to the dogs this summer". The Georgia Straight. 2019-07-02. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  14. ^ "Red Gate Arts Society • Red Gate TV". redgate.tv. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  15. ^ "Postmedia's John Mackie nominated for National Newspaper Award". The Vancouver Sun. March 18, 2022.
  16. ^ Mackie, John (May 16, 2012). "'Hip! Portraits of Cool' focuses on four decades of counterculture icons". The Vancouver Sun.
  17. ^ admin (2011-03-31). "Cool Beat". The Allen Ginsberg Project. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  18. ^ Mackie, John (May 16, 2012). "Hip! Portraits of Cool' focuses on four decades of counterculture icons". The Vancouver Sun.
  19. ^ "Art Perry - Capture Photography Festival". September 3, 2015.
  20. ^ "Nick Cave photo by Art Perry". GQ Magazine (148). September 2002.
  21. ^ "Art Perry - Capture Photography Festival". capturephotofest.com. September 3, 2015.
  22. ^ "Best Books of 1999". The Washington Post. December 5, 1999.
  23. ^ Perry, Art (1999). The Tibetans. New York: Viking Studio. pp. xv. ISBN 0-670-88645-9.
  24. ^ "Art Perry, Facing Ireland: Irish Portraits - Capture Photography Festival". capturephotofest.com. September 22, 2013.
  25. ^ Tonkinson, Carole. "Buddhism & the Beat Generation". Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
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