Facing Photographs Exhibition Opens at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s Walter Phillips Gallery

Featuring works primarily selected from Banff Centre’s permanent collection, Facing Photographs will run from February 14 to May 4, 2025. 

BANFF, AB, February 12, 2025 – After months of renovations and public closure, Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity reopens with an exhibition presented in partnership with Exposure Photography Festival. Facing Photographs, organized by Jacqueline Bell, Curator of Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre, runs from February 14 to May 4, 2025 with an opening reception on Thursday, February 13 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Central to the works that comprise Facing Photographs is the series Facing the Camera by Rosalie Favell, celebrated Winnipeg-born artist of Métis heritage. The series was initiated by Favell while on residence at Banff Centre in 2008 where, in the company other Indigenous artists, she sought to create a document of this group. Facing the Camera later grew to include over five hundred individual portraits of Indigenous artists and arts workers in Canada, Australia and the United States. Facing Photographs presents 13 works from the series in Banff Centre’s permanent collection, depicting the residency cohort and visiting artists at Banff Centre.

Building upon the ideas present in Favell’s series, Facing Photographs brings together works in photography, video and other media that take up questions of agency in relation to self-representation, or representations of those who share with the artist’s forms of identification or social world. The presented works engage with photography’s entanglement with colonialism, refuse fixed understandings of identity, or reflect modes of self-representation.

Alongside portraits from Favell’s series, Facing the Camera, the exhibition includes works by Lori Blondeau, Cassils, Allyson Clay, Anna Binta Diallo, John Edmonds, Evergon, Logan MacDonald, Nadia Myre, Shelley Niro, Barbara Spohr, and Jin-me Yoon.

Audiences of Facing Photographs may also be interested in an upcoming artist talk with Filipino Canadian photo-based artist Karen Zalamea, winner of the 2025 Barbara Spohr Memorial Award for Photography, on Friday, February 28 at 4 p.m. Zalamea will speak to her broader practice and the series Herbarium (after Flora de Filipinas) (2024-ongoing) that she will continue while on residency at Banff Centre.

Facing Photographs
Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
107 Tunnel Mtn Drive, Banff
February 14 –May 4, 2025
FREE
Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 12:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 13, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Facing Photographs is made possible through the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Government of Canada and Government of Alberta.

For more information on Banff Centre’s Visual Arts training and development opportunities, visit banffcentre.ca/visual-arts. To find out more about Walter Phillips Gallery exhibitions, please visit banffcentre.ca/walter-phillips-gallery.

Interviews are available with:

• Jacqueline Bell - Acting Director, Visual Arts and Curator, Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre
• Josephine Ridge - Executive Director, Arts at Banff Centre

For photos, information or interview requests, please contact:

Carly Maga
Director, Communications
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
tel: +1.403.763.6210
cell: +1.403.431.3423
carly_maga@banffcentre.ca

About Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity

Founded in 1933, Banff Centre is a post-secondary institution built upon an extraordinary legacy of excellence in artistic and leadership development. What started as a single course in drama has grown to become a global organization leading in arts, culture, and creative decision-making across dozens of disciplines, from the fine arts to Indigenous Wise Practices. From our home in the stunning Canadian Rocky Mountains, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity aims to move everyone who attends our campus - artists, leaders, thinkers, and audiences - to unleash their creative potential and realize their unique contribution to build an innovative, inspiring future through education, performances, convenings, and public outreach. banffcentre.ca

About Walter Phillips Gallery

Walter Phillips Gallery is exclusively committed to the production, presentation, collection and analysis of contemporary art and curatorial practice. For contemporary artists, particularly those engaged in alternative forms of practice, Walter Phillips Gallery remains an essential and principal site where art is presented to an audience for critical reception. banffcentre.ca/walter-phillips-gallery

Image Credits:

1. Rosalie Favell, Candice Hopkins, Banff, Alberta; Nadia Myre, Banff, Alberta; Tania Willard, Banff, Alberta; all 2008, from the series, Facing the Camera, 2008-2018.
2. Shelley Niro, Mohawks in Beehives, 1991. Collection of Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity P96 0073 P