ABEL BOULINEAU at the Art Gallery of Ontario (317 Dundas West), to August 21. 416-979-6648. $18, srs $15, stu $10, free Wednesday 6-8:30 pm. See listing. Rating: NNNN
Where I was born… takes its title from an inscription on the back of a photo in this collection of small sepia snapshots taken in rural France between 1897 and 1916. An astute intern researched the date of birth on the small-town streetscape and discovered it was that of Abel Boulineau, an academic painter not previously known to have made photographs.
While the Lumière brothers used newfangled movie cameras to envision the wonders of the future, Boulineau, like tourists today, sought romantic images of pre-industrial life: milkmaids, washerwomen, country markets, an itinerant hat-maker, a simple pottery studio. Primitive photographic tech makes for interesting effects like a ghostly dog that wouldn’t stand still and panoramas constructed from three prints.
Though not as quirky as Jacques Henri Lartigue’s work of the same era, Boulineau’s charming gelatin-silver prints let us a peer through the artist’s eyes into a vanished world.
art@nowtoronto.com
