Geoffrey James (photographer)

Geoffrey James LL. D. (born January 9, 1942) is a Canadian documentary photographer, who lives in Montreal and has been influenced lifelong by Eugene Atget. Like Atget, he has been fascinated with the built environment. Early in his long career, James made panoramic landscapes. These black-and-white photographs illuminated his subjects, nature's spaces and the changes wrought by society on both its more idealized creations such as formal gardens and its darker side - the asbestos mining landscape. His aims were two-fold, both "Utopia" and "Dystopia". (Utopia/Dystopia was the title of his book/catalogue and retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa in 2008.

Around 2010 he was reborn as a digital photographer and his work, mainly of Toronto, though still intelligent and meditative, became more socially oriented. In 2016, appropriately, he was appointed the first Photo Laureate of Toronto by Mayor John Tory.

For some years, James has been fascinated with the modern architect Jože Plečnik (1875-1957) and his architecture, especially the social places he created, in Ljubljana, Slovenia and exhibited photographs in shows about his work, both in Canada (2019) and abroad (2022). In 2023, James was described as a "consummate photographer with a distinctive vision".

Life and work
James was born in St. Asaph, Wales and attended Wellington College, Berkshire, and Wadham College, Oxford, where he received a degree (modern history) in 1964. At Wadham College, he was editor of Isis, the student weekly magazine and upon graduation left for a job as a reporter for the Philadelphia Bulletin. At this juncture, he bought a twin-lens Rolleiflex and began to teach himself photography. He moved to Canada in 1966, where he was an associate editor of Time Canada in Montreal (1967–1975) and wrote cover stories on people and events such as Arthur Erickson, Robertson Davies, Mordecai Richler, Genevieve Bujold and The October Crisis. From 1975-1982, he was an administrator as head of the Visual Arts, film and Video section of the Canada Council, Ottawa. In 1977 he received a 1920s panoramic camera as a gift which led him to new explorations. From 1982 to 1984 James was a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa. He lived in Montreal for his first 18 years in Canada, moved to Toronto in the mid-nineties, spent 25 years there, and returned to Montreal in 2023 where he lives today.

Photography for him was like "stepping into a river" which totally immersed him. Between 1987 and 2002, he used large-format and panoramic film cameras to record landscape that has felt the impact of human activity, choosing as his subject places like the Roman Campagna and the landscapes of formal gardens (for six or seven years he photographed all the works of Frederick Law Olmsted, for instead). In the early 1990s he photographed the reverse of his earlier work, photographing asbestos mining sites and the US/Mexico border fence in southern California. In the 2000s, he studied suburban and urban landscape in cities such as Paris, France (2001) (he didn't photograph the tourist sites which to him were a giant cliché), Lethbridge, Alberta (2002) and Toronto, Ontario (2006) with which he has a love/hate relationship. A retrospective of his work, Utopia/Dystopia: Geoffrey James was exhibited by the National Gallery of Canada in 2008. In a review of the book/catalogue which accompanied the show, the Canadian Book Review Annual described James' work as mirroring society "with sometimes painful accuracy".

James changed into a digital photographer around 2010 and his photographs became more socially oriented. Before Kingston Penitentiary in Kingston officially closed in 2013, he made a formal study documenting and memorializing it during its final period of operation, which was published in 2014. In the National Gallery of Canada magazine, James' essay in the book, Prison Notes was described as "brief, but elegant". The magazine called his photographs a "surprisingly moving pictorial look".

In 2016, he was appointed the first Photo Laureate of Toronto, serving as a representative to visual artists and photographers. "Toronto is a wonderful subject", James said. "It's a city in a constant state of transformation, an exhilarating social experiment, as well as a place that reveals itself slowly".

He has been impressed with the little known modern architect Jože Plečnik (1875-1957) and his architecture, especially the social places he created, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, for many years and has been planning to do a book of photographs on his achievements. In 2019, the Daniels School of Architecture, Toronto, Ontario exhibited a show of his photographs about Plečnik, Working Spaces/CivicSettings: Joze Plecnik in Ljubljana and in 2022 his show Social Spaces: Joze Plecnik and Ljubljana was exhibited at the Architecturzentrum Wien, Vienna, Austria and at UNESCO, Paris, France. "There is a combination of the social and the spiritual in Plečnik's work that is not evident in most of the architectural photographs I have seen," James said about Plečnik.

James's thoughtful photographs, taken at both day and night, and through the seasons, show Plečnik's studio and the wide range of his urban achievements. In the exhibition at the Daniels School of Architecture, photographs on multiple digital screens illuminated the architect's social spaces.

Quotes on photography
James has said of photography that "today we're drowning in a sea of images". He also down plays the ability of photography to change society. As he has said: "There's a kind of truism now in art, that you know, all good art is political. I'm not sure that's true. I think my work deals with the real world and it deals sometimes with social problems but I've absolutely no delusions about the power of art to change peoples minds. I think the least effective way of effecting social change is to take photographs".

He believes that the best photography tells what it is like to be somewhere, that it has "a mnemonic power that no other medium has, [that is,] a power to recall things". For James, "a really good photo can be an object of reverie, of dreaming" and he hopes his photography will be remembered for that quality.

Selected publications in which James' work appears
James has said that a book of photographs of his work is his primary medium because it has sequence which is preferable to him because he creates in a series. His work is slow to get a reaction so these books are to him like sending "a message in a bottle". Some of the books and catalogues in which his work appears are the following:
 * (essays by Elizabeth Armstrong, Sebastian Rotella, Dot Tuer);
 * (foreword by Linda Jansma);
 * (introduction by Mark Kingwell);
 * (essays by Stephen Bann and Britt Salvesen);
 * (forthcoming)
 * (essays by Elizabeth Armstrong, Sebastian Rotella, Dot Tuer);
 * (foreword by Linda Jansma);
 * (introduction by Mark Kingwell);
 * (essays by Stephen Bann and Britt Salvesen);
 * (forthcoming)
 * (introduction by Mark Kingwell);
 * (essays by Stephen Bann and Britt Salvesen);
 * (forthcoming)
 * (introduction by Mark Kingwell);
 * (essays by Stephen Bann and Britt Salvesen);
 * (forthcoming)
 * (forthcoming)
 * (forthcoming)
 * (forthcoming)
 * (forthcoming)
 * (forthcoming)
 * (forthcoming)

Writing and editing by James

 * ; (edited by James among others)
 * (Introduction by James)
 * ("Josef Sudek and the panorama" by Geoffrey James)
 * ("Josef Sudek and the panorama" by Geoffrey James)

Selected exhibitions
In 1971, James began exhibiting his work publicly. His first solo exhibition was at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University in Montreal. He had many solo shows afterwards, both nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at NSCAD (1983), at the University of Kent, England (1985), the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa (1986), The Power Plant, Toronto (1993), the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario (2001), a retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario (2008), and at the Oregon Centre for the Photographic Arts, Portland, Oregon (2010). In 2019 and 2022, he concentrated on shows about Jože Plečnik and his architecture, especially the social places he created, in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

His group shows at both public and private galleries are numerous. His work was included in exhibitions starting in 1977 with 13 Canadian Photographers, Madison Art Center, Madison, Wisconsin and included afterwards in shows in such places as Paris, France (1987), Budapest, Hungary (1987), New York (1987, at the MoMA in 1996 and 2009), Los Angeles (1990, 1991, 1996)), Kassel, Germany (1992), Naples, Italy (1994), at the Canadian Centre for Architecture Montreal, Quebec (1996, 2000), and National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (1998, 2007, 2012), and elsewhere. In 2022, his work was included in a group exhibition titled Wanderlust: Around the World in 80 Photographs at Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto and also in an exhibition titled I Was Here at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. He is represented by Trépanier Baer Gallery, Calgary, Alberta; Equinox Gallery in Vancouver and Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto.

Selected works in public collections

 * Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario;
 * Art Gallery of Alberta;
 * Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto;
 * Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa;
 * Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal;
 * Cleveland Museum of Art;
 * Concordia University, Montréal;
 * Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa;
 * Glenbow Museum;
 * Montreal Museum of Fine Arts;
 * Musée Carnavalet, Paris;
 * Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal;
 * Museum of Modern Art, New York;
 * National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa;
 * San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art;
 * San Francisco Museum of Modern Art;
 * Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver;
 * Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg;

Awards and honours

 * Fellow of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago;
 * Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York;
 * Victor Lynch-Staunton Prize, Canada Council (1991);
 * Roloff Beny Foundation Photography Book Award;
 * Gershon Iskowitz Foundation Prize (2002);
 * Royal Canadian Academy of Arts;
 * Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts (2012);
 * First Photo Laureate of Toronto (2016-2019);
 * Honorary Doctorate, St John's College, University of Manitoba, 2022;