Martha Hanna, CMCP, her 2003 book

Above is another of my pure abstract photos, New Leaves, 2008.

Martha Hanna, for those of you living outside of Ottawa, ON, is the ultra-conservative director of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. http://www.cmcp.gallery.ca Back in 2003 she put on a show, A Confluence of Contemporary Canadian Photography, with the help of staff at the National Gallery of Canada,  A 74-page catalog of still photographs came with the show. Still photography is Martha Hanna's favorite style for the medium. 

Marth Hanna should have used Conformity instead of Confluence in the title.


In case we don't know, Martha Hanna explains what a good still photograph entails. "The introduction of photography into the fine print collections of art galleries emphasized the detail, quality, and resolution of the photographic print." And "The scrap yard and oil refinery photographs [of Edward Burtynsky] of the 1990s have become increasingly more clear and vivid through the enhanced possibilities of technological control and fine papers." Lastly, "It's facility for registering a likeness, its reference to the real, its indexical nature are inherent attributes of the medium [of photography]."


"Inherent attributes" my ass. This is why directors of institutions, especially those dealing with photography, are only mildly believable. They promote their personal taste and think they are doing the world and the medium a favor. They are not. 

Martha Hanna's book reminds me of a drive I once took along a highway cut through deciduous woodland. The trees obscured the distant horizon. Then a yellow sign moving toward me indicated I was entering a stretch of highway where White-tailed Deer frequently cross. I snapped to a more alert state, hoping to secure a vision of tan movement along the treed edge of the road. The kms passed and no deer was seen. Like Marth Hanna's book, the really good stuff, the moving deer, the great photos, are obscured by the trees, the still photographs, and I am left wondering why she continues to trivialize the medium of photography and not  give it the full democratic freedom of expression it deserves. There are no deer in her book. The trees, her narrow choice of still pictures, obscure the real possiblities.