five cities | april 26 - may 17 2003

Toronto Star | May 04, 2003
Peter Goddard

Tomasz Konart's "Five Cities" show at Peak Gallery, 23 Morrow Ave., indicates that photography doesn't begin or end with the Contact festival. (Peak Gallery has opted out this year.)

The five cities in question are Lodz and Warsaw in Poland, Berlin and Nürnberg in Germany, and Toronto. Each is laid out in triptych fashion with three narrow, shadow-filled black and white photos showing - hinting at would be more like it - several nondescript spots in each city. They could all be the same city.

What's really on the Polish-born Toronto photographer's mind is how we get to think they're all the same city. To many photographers, image making deals with memory. To Konart, it would seem to be about forgetting. What's not clear in his image is as important as what is. What is clear, though, is that Konart's Web-based photos show - an adjunct to the Peak exhibition that ends May 17 - may be one of the most innovative photo exhibits you'll find.

Click on www.peakgallery.com , go to "gallery artists" then the name, Tomasz Konart. Find his Web site and click any of a series of works from 1977-2003.