Jon Rafman on rue Saint-Viateur Ouest,Montreal, Quebec, June 2015. Photo Roger Lemoyne.
Canadian Art has been nominated in the 39th annual National Magazine Awards.
The nomination in Portrait Photography category honours Roger LeMoyne’s distinctive—and highly appropriate—portrait of artist Jon Rafman from the Fall 2015 issue of Canadian Art.
Jon Rafman is perhaps best known for this series Nine Eyes of Google Street View (2009–), which highlights images from Google Street View that are alternately surprising, poignant, alarming and confounding.
So when LeMoyne created his portrait of Rafman, he decided to deliver a nod to the series of images which has made Rafman famous.
After photographing Rafman crossing Rue St-Viateur Ouest in his home base of Montreal—iPhone to his ear—LeMoyne took the image back to his studio and blurred out the faces of all the other people in the image, à la Google Street View. Only Rafman’s face can be seen clearly.
“I don’t care to have a singular style or way of working, style can very quickly become a trap,” LeMoyne says on his website. “I prefer to explore the medium of photography. I believe it is the process of change within work that separates the artist from the craftsman. But one thing I am always looking for in my photographs is a kind of cross-current. I never want the photograph to be just one thing, one mood, one idea. Rather, it should be a place where multiple, often contradictory, impressions overlap.”
Roger LeMoyne studied film and music at Concordia University in Montreal, toured Canada with a band and worked in film and music before turning to photography. Since the early 1990s, he has spent most of his time documenting the human condition, conflict, human rights issues and international aid in the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe. His images have garnered more than 50 awards internationally, including the Michener-Deacon Fellowship in 2013, a Canada Council for the Arts grant in 2013, a Quebec Arts Council grant in 2009, and the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize in 2007, among others. Prior to today, he had been nominated for 14 National Magazine Awards.
A freelancer his entire career, LeMoyne’s pictures have been distributed by Gamma-Liaison, Getty Images and currently Redux Pictures of New York. He lives in Montreal with his wife, a physician, and their two young children.
To read the story for which the photo was taken—an in-depth profile of Rafman by Murray Whyte—visit “Jon Rafman: Internet Explorer.”
