Just a few blocks down from the activity in the ByWard Market, La Petite Mort Gallery bustled as photographer João Canziani premiered his newest photo series Sept. 9.
The photographs in “Canadian Café Bar” feature pin-up style portraits of women employed at the Canadian Café Bar in Lima, Peru.
Though Canziani is currently based in New York City, he was born in Lima. At 15, his family moved to Vancouver. Canziani said he was instantly intrigued by his new surroundings in Canada and began documenting the sights through his lens.
Canziani has now made a full circle with “Canadian Café Bar” by returning home to shoot professionally.
The project began in Lima in 2009 while Canziani was on assignment with Travel + Leisure magazine. Canziani said he spotted a nude woman in the distance posing for another photographer on the beach. He approached the model and learned her name was Erika and that she worked at the Canadian Café Bar — so named because of its service of Canadian Club.
She agreed to pose for him, but not free of charge. In time, Canziani was able to convince other women who worked at the bar to pose, paying them for their time as well.
In one photograph, a woman in a pink bra is leaning against one of the three walls in a blue-tiled hotel shower.
Her face is angled towards the camera. Her eyes possess traces of ancient mystique.
“She is seductive just by looking at you,” said one gallery-goer looking at the picture.
Prostitute is not an accurate descriptor for this group of women, Canziani said. Though they are paid by their male customers, the women will only go as far as talk or kiss with a client for the night.
Most of the women work at the café in order to pay for college or take care of their families, according to his artist statement.
Canziani is hoping to change people’s negative preconceptions by capturing each woman’s naivety, innocence and sense of humanity, he said.
Word of Canziani’s project reached the Embassy of Peru, which was eager to get involved, the Peruvian Ambassador to Canada Jose Antonio Bellina said.
He said he felt it was important that “the embassy . . . show everything about Peruvian culture,” no matter how controversial or explicit the art may be. “We may not like it much,” he said referring to the subculture, “but it’s real.”
The Peruvian Embassy also contacted Ottawa gallery owner Guy Bérubé to see if he was interested in hosting the collection.
Bérubé said he felt Canziani’s work was “a perfect match” for the gallery because of its presentation of raw, vulnerable subjects that were “outside the box.”
Though the point of the exhibit is not sex, Canziani said he wanted his models nude and in suggestive poses to create intimacy.
He said he still had a “desire to get close to them . . . without sleeping with them.”
Perhaps the best way to sum up the artist’s intent is through a photograph found roughly half-way between the nudes.
It’s the only photo in the collection which contains no model at all.
Instead, a bouquet of flowers sits on a white tablecloth embroidered with blue thread.
The flowers were the first thing Canziani noticed when walking into the hotel room, even though they were darkly lit, he said.
Although the flowers were fake, the bouquet was “still sensual,” he said.
As he traced the outline of the flowers with his finger, a visible curve emerged from the top leaf down to the bottom one, done unintentionally at the time.
“Maybe it was done instinctively,” he said.
