Do As You Wish
A featured exhibition in The Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival
Chad Tobin and Steve Wadden
Opening: Thursday, May 3 (7 to 10 pm)
Cape Breton photographers Chad Tobin and Steve Wadden present a tribute to photographer Robert Frank in this exhibition. Combining Tobin’s To Be Frank and Wadden’s Forged as one exhibition, Do As You Wish celebrates their connections to one of photography’s most recognized and mythological characters.
Since the early 1970s Frank and his wife June Leaf have occupied a home in Mabou, on Cape Breton Island. Tobin has been visiting and photographing Robert Frank there since 2010. To Be Frank explores the idea of connection between land, love and loss—weaving a series of intimate portraits of Frank into the spirit of the island itself.
Wadden first met Frank in 2005, seeking to connect with the man who inspired his project Forged — a Cape Breton character tribute, for a place where the forging of steel led to the forging of culture. Largely inspired by the intention of Frank’s Welsh mining series of the 1950s, Forged spans a ten-year period in a gritty steel working neighbourhood following the closure of the island’s only steel plant.
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| To Be Frank Photo by Chad Tobin |
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| Forged Photo by Steve Wadden |
