About Face - The Photographic Art of John Reeves - abridged version - 2019.

About Face

The Photographic Art of John Reeves

A Project Lifeworld E-Publication - 2019

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Jihn Reeves - About Face ISBN Published in 2013 by LIfeworld E-Publications 72 Ellsworth Avenue Toronto - Ontario - M6G 2K3 e-mail:

Distributed in Canada by

Distributed in the United States by

A Project Lifeworld E-Publication - 2019 page a

Project Management and Design : Pierre Ouellet

About Face Texts by Barry Callaghan, Vince Pietropaulo & Pierre Ouellet

Photography by John Reeves

With an Introduction by Barry Callaghan page a

John Reeves by Barry Callaghan John Reeves, the photographer, is like a man who has turned inland so that he can push to the edge, attack all boundaries from within. Men like that know how to stand their ground. His ground is the face. Most photographs of the face are not serious. They are a matter of courtesy,, not truth.

A truth is always a little embarrassing. There are many ways to come at truth. You can come at it from outside, dolling up space or cropping space as your close in on the face. That is how some sculptors try to put a good face on stone., But there ar other sculptors, and photographers, who take what they are given, not what they can get. They talke the face that is already in the stone, in the camera eye. They take it with humility, and then like Reeves, they attack from inland.

Many photographers bring to a face what they think it lack, the lighting of greatness, the dimmers of taste, the claptrap of cultural gestures from someplace else, gestures from the outside. Not Reeves. He is parochial, not provincial. He goes to ground. The person, the face, can be from anywhere, but — where a Karsh goes for the pose — the face is where Reeves is. It is his place, his locale.

There is a deep trust here, and a faith. While the colossal, the glamorously neon, the minimalist, and the makeshift are collapsing, Reeves is at the centre, believing not only the centre can hold, but that the centre — the face he is attacking — will hold no matter how hard he pushes to the edge, the ear, the jawline, the brow. He trusts not tricks, but the character inherent in each face — and it is remarkable how often he gets the face to bespeak the being of the person — the impenetrable Stalinist gloom of Guillevic, the schizophrenic terror of Margaret Gibson, the beneficent melancholy of Amachai, the “weight” of Mavis Gallant, or Timothy Findley, defiant in his bewildered anguish — and by trusting that inherent character, Reeves is always moving from sentiment to the edge because he knows that on the edge is best.

Exile 1992

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Portrait of John Reeves - circa 1963

by Paul Young

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John Reeves by Barry Callaghan…………………………………

Table of Content …………………………………………..............

Chronology of Works …………………………………..................

Portraits………………………………………………………..........

Inuit ArtWorld …………………………………………………........

Jazz Lives ………………………………………….......................

Artists …………………………………………..............................

Authors …………………………………………………….............

Reeves’ Women ……………………………………………………

Surfacing for Atwood……………………………………………….

Harold Town ..............................................................................

Documentary Shooting ……………………………………….......

About Face ………………………………....................................

John Reeves by Vince Pietropaulo (POV magazine) …………

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4-5 7-8 8-9 11-20 21-39 40-48 49-59 60-70 71-84 85-94 95-100 101-114 115-126 127-136

Table of Content Portraits 1960 - 1970

Inuit ArtWorld 1970’s

Jazz Lives 1970’s

Artists 1970 - 1980 page a

Authors 1980 - 1990

Reeves’ Women 1975 to present

Surfacing for Atwood & other experiments

Documentary Photography

About Face

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A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense and is thereby a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.

Ansel Adams page a

Portraits

Travel photo by Claire Weiseman Wilkes

1960-2016 page a

Robertson Davies

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Marshall McLuhan

His portraits were gorgeously composed and he had one of the things I find rarest in photographers which is a sense of line‌ The qualities of mood of personality and spirit that you look for and expect in a painted portrait where the same qualities that he was looking for when he was setting people up in his studio. David Warren (interview) page a

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Leonard Cohen

Inuit Art World

Travel photo by Claire Weiseman Wilkes

1971 1982 1998 page a

Resolute Bay

I was so surprised when John took upon himself to do this the heroic treck north to the tundra to immerse himself in Inuit culture ‌ I had always thought of John, to that point, as a quintessential urban man.

Gary Michael Dault (interview)

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Latcholassie Akesuk

Young Girl

Onark Lake

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All those people are gone, and they represent a lifestyle that was going very quickly… And the young people are very concerned because they don’t know which way is up… There told one thing, there told another thing… There’s funding for this there’s no funding for that… BIP BOP BANG which results in a lot of… Despair.

Terry Ryan (interview)

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Jazz Lives

Travel photo by Claire Weiseman Wilkes

1970’s page a

Tony Bennet

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Dave Brubeck

So one day I’m reading that Jean Lees and anguish about his Vietnam war has moved home to Canada and Toronto and, suddenly, the obvious dawned: we could do a book: he could write and I could take pictures. So we pitched the idea to McClellan and Stewart and they bought it and we came up with jazz lives, the facial landscapes of 100 important jazz artists starting with the oldest and ending at the youngest. John Reeves (interview) page a

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Oscar Peterson

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Dizzy Gillespie

Artists & The Culture Beat

1970s Travel photo by Claire Weiseman Wilkes

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John is a very physical person himself; he loves the physical life... the life of eating and drinking and being face-to-face so when he thinks more and more about how to get deeper into another person, he automatically moves closer... he intuitively starts trying to get into your space and into your face and under your skin... it’s like it’s the only way he knows how to approach you as a human being is “face-toface.” Lily Kolton (interview) page a

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William Ronald - 1972

Pierre Boulez

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Rina Letendre page a

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Authors

Travel photo by Claire Weiseman Wilkes

1970 - 1980 page a

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Morley Callaghan

Mavis Gallant

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Mordecai Richler

Margaret Atwood - 1972

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Northrop Frye

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Reeves’ Women

Travel photo by Claire Weiseman Wilkes

1970 page a

Louise Murch Photographing women became an important issue as we moved into the 70s so I became interested in developing an approach to photographing women where you get serious, where you want them and not some silly construct of them.

1975 was international year of the woman and I did a huge project for the stills division of the national film Board traveled across the country shooting women.

I became interested in how women were seen in the media and the prevailing idea that we like our intellectuals, but we like them (more) if they are cute.

I didn’t have their hair done and tell them to rent some nice clothes - I told them: “look how you want to look and wear what you want to wear, whatever that might be.� page a

John Reeves (interview)

Cecilia Jowett

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Helen Hutchison

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Dorothy Cameron

Penny Kome

RenĂŠe Claude

Maureen Forester

Karen Kain

Celia Franca

Gabrielle Roy

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RenĂŠe Claude

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Michelle Ouellet

This was an incredibly powerful series of notable women, some creative some notable, ...

And it’s like one picture after another of the most beautifully composed images‌ The color sense is absolutely flawless‌ John invariably finds the image to make the portrait which has the most perfect congruence of coloring in it which somehow, nevertheless, allows the character to dominate... and you truly get this amazing aesthetic gratification looking at those pieces because the work as a work is really beautiful and gives you a sense of being well fed, both visually and intellectually. Lilly Koltun (interview)

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Surfacing for Atwood

Travel photo by Claire Weiseman Wilkes

1990s page a

Varley Gallery In the last 10 years or so, I got interested in digital imagery and what you could do with that approach including what you could do starting with a straight photograph and digitally processing it.

I started taking photographs that I had done, a lot of it was portraiture, and riffing on it in digital form, changing colors and playing with various techniques and so forth.

I would argue that in the case of portraits, one is still responding to the subject, which is my thing, a continuation of the work I was doing the 60s and 70s and 80s. John Reeves (interview)

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Varley Gallery

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Harold Town

Travel photo by Claire Weiseman Wilkes

1970 to 2000 page a

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Documentary Photojournalism

Travel photo by Claire Weiseman Wilkes

Ongoing page a

It doesn’t just happen by accident, the elicitation, the cooperation, the reciprocity, the giving and taking, the gifting and receiving...

I was working in my dark room one morning when I heard John on the radio say something about a great portrait being “given not taken� and that really stopped me in my tracks. Vince Pietropaulo (interview) page a

I see myself as a journalist; I want to talk about something of substance that’s there.

John Reeves (interview). page a

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About Face

Travel photo by Claire Weiseman Wilkes

1990 to present page a

Jack McLellan

He wasn’t Cartier Bresson, he was more Irving Penn; he was more formalistic, he wasn’t trying to get the thing on the street, he needed control he wanted control, he wanted to be formal and I admire that about him and I hired him all the time.

Tom Henley (interview)

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Allan Fleming

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James Hill

Michael Snow

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John Reeves, by Peter Croydon 1977

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