Photographer Tony Fouhse has won the 2010 Karsh Award for his perspective of addicts in downtown Ottawa.
Walking into the Karsh Masson Gallery, visitors are struck by the array of portrait subjects captured by Centretown photographer Tony Fouhse. They see the steely eyes of Stephen Harper, the seductive smirk of a porn star, the vulnerable lover in a warm embrace. Different people placed side by side, from drug dealers to waitresses to politicians.
Going up the stairs there is a new set of faces. Pain is dancing in the eyes of those who stared into his lens and their raw emotion is on display. They are addicts, and, Fouhse makes clear, they are human beings.
These are the photos that won the Cooper Street resident the 2010 Karsh award, an honour that he says made him giggle at first.
“The thing is, in the end I don’t believe it, because if you fall for it when they like you, you have to fall for it when they don’t like you,” he says. “I don’t pay any attention to what’s (current) in the art world, I just do my thing.”
This doesn’t mean Fouhse isn’t happy about winning the award. “It’s very nice to get the recognition,” he says, adding that he plans on taking the $7,500 prize to start another large project in Los Angeles in February.
Fouhse plans on shooting portraits for the project, but he hasn’t decided what will come of it. “I understand what I’m doing, but I don’t really want to make anything too concrete,” he says.
Andrea Kunard, one of the jurors who chose Fouhse as this year’s winner, says she finds Fouhse’s work has a very strong sense of composition and colour.
Diana Nemiroff, director of the Carleton University Art Gallery, was also a juror. She says that in deciding the winner, they looked at the photographers’ body of work, as well as the seriousness of the subject.
“We felt that Tony had a clear vision in his photography, particularly in the body of work that he’s made of addicts,” Nemiroff says. “He communicates (a) vision of them as real people and people who shouldn’t be overlooked in our society.”
While his photos have received praise, they have also faced controversy. Some of his subjects are addicts, and critics have called the photos exploitative.
“If someone thinks I’m exploiting them, fine, you’re entitled to believe that,” Fouhse says. “Anyone that thinks (addicts are) too stupid to understand what I’m doing is dehumanizing them way more than anything I could ever do.”
Fouhse has also been criticized for giving his subjects money for a photo shoot, but he says he’s not there to judge them or to change them. Fouhse says those who look down on his work have probably never spoken to, let alone worked in collaboration with, an addict.
“You’re criticizing things you don’t understand . . . yet you somehow feel you can tell me what I should be doing,” Fouhse says. “I’m doing something, you’re doing nothing.”
Nemiroff says the subject matter of the photos can make people uncomfortable, but to her, Fouhse’s intentions are not exploitative.
“Tony seems to work very much hand in hand with his subjects and he encourages them to be partners in creating a picture of themselves,” Nemiroff says. “His work is very sympathetic . . . it doesn’t dehumanize his subjects in any way.”
Kunard says those who think people are being exploited should ask the subjects, not the photographer. “You have to give the people being photographed credit,” she says.
Fouhse says that everyone has their own opinion of what he does, but he doesn’t take from the addicts. They gave in collaboration with him, and like him, they want people to see the results, he says.
“I’m an interested observer who’s working with them to show an aspect of their life,” he says. “That’s one of the reasons they respect me down there. I’m not judging them, I’m saying let’s do something together.”