Geoffrey James

Geoffrey James LL. D. (born January 9, 1942) is a Canadian documentary photographer, who lives in Montreal and has been influenced lifelong by Eugene Atget. Like Atget, he has been fascinated with the built environment. Early in his long career, James made panoramic landscapes. These black-and-white photographs illuminated his subjects, nature's spaces and the changes wrought by society on both its more idealized creations such as formal gardens and its darker side - the asbestos mining landscape. His aims were two-fold, both "Utopia" and "Dystopia". (Utopia/Dystopia was the title of his book/catalogue and retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa in 2008.

Around 2010 he was reborn as a digital photographer and his work, mainly of Toronto, though still intelligent and meditative, became more socially oriented. In 2016, appropriately, he was appointed the first Photo Laureate of Toronto by Mayor John Tory.

Life and work James was born in St. Asaph, Wales and attended Wellington College, Berkshire, and Wadham College, Oxford, where he received a degree (modern history) in 1964. He lived in Montreal for his first 18 years in Canada, moved to Toronto in the mid-nineties, spent 25 years there,

Photography for him was like "stepping into a river" which totally immersed him. In the 2000s, he studied suburban and urban landscape in cities such as Paris, France (2001) (he didn't photograph the tourist sites which to him were a giant cliché),

James changed into a digital photographer around 2010 and his photographs became more socially oriented. which was published in 2014. In the National Gallery of Canada magazine, James' essay in the book, Prison Notes was described as "brief, but elegant". The magazine called his photographs a "surprisingly moving pictorial look".

In 2016, he was appointed the first Photo Laureate of Toronto,

He has been impressed with the little known modern architect Jože Plečnik (1875-1957) and his architecture, especially the social places he created, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, for many years and has been planning to do a book of photographs on his achievements. and in 2022 his show Social Spaces: Joze Plecnik and Ljubljana was exhibited at the Architecturzentrum Wien, Vienna, Austria and at UNESCO, Paris, France.

He believes that the best photography tells what it is like to be somewhere, that it has "a mnemonic power that no other medium has, [that is,] a power to recall things". Some of the books and catalogues in which his work appears are the following: (essay by Martha Langford); ; (essays by Elizabeth Armstrong, Sebastian Rotella, Dot Tuer); ; (foreword by Linda Jansma); ; ; (introduction by Mark Kingwell); (essays by Stephen Bann and Britt Salvesen); ;

Writing and editing by James (edited by James among others)

(Introduction by James) ("Josef Sudek and the panorama" by Geoffrey James)

Selected exhibitions In 1971, James began exhibiting his work publicly. His first solo exhibition was at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University in Montreal. He had many solo shows afterwards, both nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at NSCAD (1983), at the University of Kent, England (1985), the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa (1986), The Power Plant, Toronto (1993), the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario (2001), a retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario (2008), and at the Oregon Centre for the Photographic Arts, Portland, Oregon (2010). In 2019 and 2022, he concentrated on shows about Jože Plečnik and his architecture, especially the social places he created, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. and also in an exhibition titled I Was Here at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. He is represented by Trépanier Baer Gallery, Calgary, Alberta; Equinox Gallery in Vancouver and Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto.

Selected works in public collections Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario; Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa; Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts (2012); First Photo Laureate of Toronto (2016-2019); Honorary Doctorate, St John's College, University of Manitoba, 2022;