In conjunction with the upcoming multimedia DOC NOW Festival taking place from May 11-June 25, featuring graduating students from Ryerson University’s MFA program in Documentary Media. The panelists for Raising the Lusitania discuss the impulse to document in images, that which is inherently not visual. Paula John’s autobiographical work seeks to embody, through a variety of visual media, the trauma of mental illness, and the unseen internal processes of breakdown and subsequent healing through creative production. Chris Manson’s work marks a move from mental to physical illness, in his photo-essay about the challenges faced by Canadian adolescents living with type-1 diabetes. The photographic works of Garett Walker and Dafydd Hughes attempt to document hidden organizational processes of geographic and digital spaces. Walker explores how memory and imagination create meaning in photographs of unmarked landmarks. Hughes’ digital exegesis of Robert Frank’s The Americans examines the ways technology intervenes in our interpretation of the ever-increasing amount of information with which we contend. These artists don’t aim to simply document the world, but to find visual representations for the often hidden forces that shape it.

Moderated by Amish Morrell, Editor of C Magazine, a quarterly journal on contemporary international art, and Special Lecturer in Visual Studies at the University of Toronto, Mississauga.

Presented by Ryerson University’s MFA program in Documentary Media