For curator Stefan St-Laurent, all it took was one photograph to help inspire him to put together Bodies in Trouble, the current exhibit at the SAW Gallery.
The photo resulted from a potent combination of elements: one person in danger, another who would risk their own life to save the other’s, and photographer Rocco Morabito being at the right place at the right time.
Morabito’s 1967 photograph “The Kiss of Life” was St-Laurent’s muse when trying to get pieces to fill the basement gallery.
St-Laurent said he wanted to show the visitors the human plight for survival and fight for freedom, and attempted to do this by filling the small exhibit with photojournalistic work and documentation of performance art.
The images of actual people, and the knowledge that the events depicted are real, make it harder to ignore the issues that this presents, St-Laurent said.
The photographs include everything from soldiers overseas to a news reporter, which St-Laurent said allows for different cultural and spiritual questions to arise that make one consider what we know versus what is the truth.
For example, photographer Alex Webb’s Crossing series asks the question, “What is a border, if not simply an imaginary line?”
In total, Bodies in Trouble showcases works from ten different photographers and five different countries.
“There wasn’t very many problems with getting the different photos, but I was surprised that we managed to get some well-known works,” St-Laurent said.
Some of these pieces include Yves Klein’s photograph “Leap into the Void”, taken in Paris in 1960, and the photo series Untitled by Maya Deren, which had been restored by SAW. Many of the photographs are being shown for the first time in Canada.
Bodies in Trouble runs at SAW Gallery until Oct. 3.