News Releases
Them=Us
In the summer of 1997, the Harmony Movement launched an ambitious project to capture the many faces and voices of Canada's diverse human landscape. The resulting exhibition of over 100 black and white images by some of Canada's leading photographers and photojournalists, entitled Them = Us: Photographic Journeys Across Our Cultural Boundaries, opens February 27, at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum (ROM).
The images are taken by many of Canada's best names in photography including members of PhotoSensitive organization: Yuri Dojc, V. Tony Hauser, and Andrew Stawicki; and guest photographers, Reena Bose, Gilbert Duclos, Vincenzo Pietropaolo, and Paul Wong. The exhibit has traveled across Canada and is now presented in a more formal setting at the ROM, with added interpretation. The ROM show adds new narrative written by the respective photographers that tells the personal stories of the people in the photographs. The works are also accompanied by prose and poetry, selected by June Callwood, of well-known writers such as Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley, Joy Kogawa, Carol Shields, Marie-Claire Blais, and Anne Michaels.
The exhibition is a collaboration between the ROM, the Multicultural History Society of Ontario (MHSO), and The Harmony Movement.
"The ROM and the MHSO have produced exhibitions cooperatively since 1994 for display in the ROM's Heritage Gallery of Canada's Peoples," explains Elizabeth McLuhan, MHSO curator of the exhibit. "Them=Us is a perfect fit given the special mandate of this gallery. Harmony is not an abstract idea: in the exhibit each photographer responds to real situations and each expresses the impact of these cross-cultural encounters in a distinctive visual mode. The images invite viewers to share the photographers explorations."
The exhibition will provide an important teaching resource at the ROM. "The photographs are rich with story lines of the diversity of people that make up Canada. This will be invaluable to educators who strive to underscore for their students the need for all Canadians to live in social harmony," says Ron Miles, Director of Education at the ROM.
The Toronto-based Harmony Movement was founded in 1994 by Dr. Joseph Wong, Gordon Cressy and Mary Anne Chambers and other concerned community activists to combat interracial intolerance and a growing "indigestion towards multiculturalism and immigration." The group has launched numerous public initiatives to raise awareness for "harmonious interaction and cooperation amongst all people," says Cheuk Kwan, Project Director of The Harmony Movement.
The exhibition is produced by the Multicultural History Society of Ontario (MHSO) and The National Movement for Harmony in Canada with support from the ROM.
Issue date:
February 19, 1999
For more information:
Media Relations
Tel.: 416.586.5547
Fax: 416.586.8022
E-mail: media@rom.on.ca
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