steve payne at the Photo Passage (York Quay Centre, 235 Queen’s Quay West) until September 16. 416-973-5379. Rating: NNNN
sometimes site is everything. Since emigrating to Toronto from Newfoundland to work as an editorial photographer, Steve Payne — you’ve seen his work in NOW — has been yearning for his homeland.
Payne captures this immigrant nostalgia in two poetic photo series, The Blithe Country and Seas Of Leaving, that play with the universal experience of nostalgia for childhood memories of something that may be purely fictitious.
The lyrical images of land, water and occasional people are far too challenging, but certainly beautiful enough, to be colour postcard pix, with a few faux tourist snapshots thrown in to keep the mix interesting. And by exhibiting these images so close to the lake that you can hear the water lapping, Payne ensures that when you see his images of the Rock, you go there.
