Reading the times

FIGURE 1 The Art Gallery of Hamilton continues its Countdown to the New Millennium series with Cees van Gemerden's photographic and textual exploration, Surviving the (dirty) nineties, on view until Dec. 5. Over the course of two and a half years, the artist photographed friends and acquaintances - mainly artists, environmentalists, and community activists - and asked them to comment on their "hopes, fears, aspirations and expectations" in the 1990s. More pointedly, he asked them how one could survive the "assault on health, education and social programs" that has characterized this decade. Most of the photographs were taken in the participants' homes; van Gemerden used a small rangefinder camera that, as he explains, "looks like a kid's camera" and makes less noise than the more popular SLRs. The result is a series of 52 portraits in which the "subjects" are engaged with the camera in a frank, relaxed and dignified mode. The second textual component of the work, dispersed through the exhibit on four clipboards, is assembled from material culled from mainstream print media over the period of the project. Despite the mainly right-wing orientation of the sources, these excerpts reveal a concern with social issues. As van Gemerden remarks, "All of us are uneasily aware that our social fabric is coming apart by the seams."

Figure 1. From Cees van Gemerden, Surviving the (dirty) nineties, 1997-1999. Silver print. Collection of the artist. Stephen and Douglass Dozdow-St. Christian: "We're Queer, and we're a couple, so feeling marginalized, being marginalized, is a way of life, but we have a special sting here in Ontario during the last three years, because something mean and corrosive has turned the marginalized from people too long neglected into targets of wilful political attack. Something venal and divisive ... has polluted the social atmosphere. And then there's Bill. He is a squeegie-kid who lives in an abandoned warehouse, and works under crumbling concrete of the Gardiner Expressway, washing the windshields of the increasing numbers of BMWs making their way to Queen's Park ... . We're out there, somewhere on the margins, just like Bill. And just like Bill, we get by ... although more and more, we are getting by in a nasty and brutish province that has abandoned the poor, or worse used them as scapegoats in order to win votes; that has turned its back on the victimized."

When van Gemerden immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands in the mid-1960s, he was looking for a more pristine and less populated place to live. He remembers the Trudeau years as "fantastic times ... the country was alive then." But we have missed opportunities to set an example in our social programs and environmental stewardship. As in the Dirty Thirties, we are seeing a resurgence of homelessness, poverty and the degradation of natural resources.

Van Gemerden began the project in 1997, spurred on by government policies that amounted, in his view, to "the criminalization of poverty." Rather than facing up to the problems created by cut-backs to social programs, governments are "going after easy targets - squeegie-kids and beer-drinking mothers - as a political expedient." In Surviving the (dirty) nineties he wants to give a voice to the people "from a grassroots level rather than from positions of power." None of the participants have joined the ranks of the homeless, and many enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, but the apprehension expressed about what van Gemerden describes as "the hard-right turn in government" is a thought-provoking testimony of the times. FIGURE 2

Figure 2. From Cees van Gemerden, Surviving the (dirty) nineties, 1997-1999. Silver print (detail). Collection of the artist. Judy Burgess, Paul and Zachary Ropel-Morski: "The 'Dirty' Nineties, for our family, has been a decade of 'ifs.' We'll manage if ...

- our jobs and non-profit art galleries continue

- if these galleries ... continue to receive government support

- if we can afford the large increase to our house taxes

- if no serious medical or dental problems arise ..."