The Canadian fascination with all things American is a bit of a problem. It’s not only present in the dominance of Hollywood film and popular music, but rears its ugly head in the realms of politics and visual art. What with the inevitability of endless Trump coverage for the next six months (please, America, let it end there), I don’t think I can handle any more news from our neighbours to the south. Relentless self-promoters, self-regarders, and self-mythologizers that they are, their vision of self as a mutable and public thing has colonized our subconscious and is inextricably linked to how we view photographic portraiture. This is even the case for those on the margins, as Outsiders American Photography and Film 1950s–1980s, currently on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario, emphatically argues. 
Marie Menken, Go! Go! Go!, 1962–1964,
16mm colour film
(courtesy: Anthology Film Archives)
The truth of this is evident in how familiar much of this work is (which is not necessarily a criticism when it comes to art). Certain faces in Gary Winogrand's crowds stand out. Even if they aren't immediately recognizable in the context of his unposed snapshots, they are definitely somebodies from an era before Instagram made everyone a somebody. Diane Arbus's subjects are familiar in a different way: perpetuated through pop culture, some have become iconic, others are known as merely art works (which leaves those we don’t know at all the most memorable of the bunch). A similar acquaintance with people we have never met is experienced in Nan Goldin’s documents of her near and dear. The manner in which they transcend history to become something mythological was explored almost twenty years ago in The Power Plant exhibition American Playhouse, curated by Philip Monk and featuring a number of the same artists. This exhibition leans more toward the anthropological, adding tables of ephemera and including more work born from the kind of new journalism that is so common now we don’t notice its subjectivity, but was radical at the time. 
Unknown American,
Susanna and a friend in the kitchen, 1955–1963,
chromogenic print
(collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario; purchase, with funds generously donated by Martha LA McCain; 2015
© Art Gallery of Ontario)
Much of this work was intended for a mass audience. Winogrand and Gordon Parks shot for Life magazine. Goldin had her sideshow performances for the local community. They were images presented as a mirror to the world and a way for Americans to see themselves. The most complicated example of this is the collection of unattributed photos gathered under the title Casa Susanna. They are the pictures that a community of men who liked to dress up in women’s clothes took of themselves. They were never intended for an art gallery (though some appeared in a magazine dedicated to those with this special interest), so when they end up in a white cube the ethics of display immediately come into question. This has less to do with who they appear to be and more with who they actually are. That’s a universal problem, not just an American one.
Art Gallery of Ontario: http://www.ago.net/outsiders
Outsiders: American Photography and Film 1950s–1980s continues until May 29.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, Azure, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog. You can follow his quickie reviews and art news announcements on Twitter @TerenceDick.
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Outsiders at the Art Gallery of Ontario
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