Published on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 by Steve Carty

For the month of May, the streets of Toronto will overflow with people attending the photography festival CONTACT. In the lead-up to the festival we’ll be featuring journal entries from a couple exhibiting groups, providing a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their preparations. Once the festival itself takes places, a feature article will be written for the website, tying together the various groups plus the festival as a whole. This post is from Steve Carty, who will be exhibiting as part of the Hermann&Audrey exhibit.

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I’ve been collaborating with graffiti artists, painters and a flashlight for nearly 5 years. This year i decided to bring it to the Contact festival with my series, “Lightworkers.”

Painting with Light. The process involves a tripod and long shutter speeds in ultra low light situations. A black studio. A night time scene. All fixed points of light create amazing star-bursts in the final image. Moving points of light create points of reference, as to where that light source has been, and where it could be potentially going. We have all seen trailing car lights blaze through an evening street scene.  Imagine this reference controlled, with masters of the line, wielding the light sources to create amazing works of art, captured only within a photograph.

By choosing to collaborate with a most accomplished graffiti artist, Skam as well as painters Jon Todd and Kwame Delfish, I put the flashlights in capable hands. The result is a body of photographs shot both in studio and on location that have the depth of a still as well as a feeling of motion as you follow the light trails through the image.

I took a unique approach with my session with Skam. Graffiti art has always been seen as vandalism, and although Skam never paints anywhere he isn’t hired to paint anymore, the roots of graffiti still lay in the underground, painting clean walls with murals and tags, often leading to arrests and neighbourhood cleanups.

On the other hand, the graffiti Skam creates with a flashlight only exist within my photograph. The entire experience is captured in a single frame. Light trails. Removed from all things except light itself, drawn once, in space over time, and saved forever. A perfect collaboration between artist and photographer.

Choosing a cross section of downtown locations, I tried to give Skam the room to work with the flashlight in ways that he was comfortable as well as forcing him to be in an overall situation that he has never been, not being able to see what he was painting.

I can’t give away the cow, but here’s a short behind the scenes from my session with Skam.

This has been a great experience and I’m excited about sharing my pieces with you all. Stay Tuned.

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