Blake Fitzpatrick

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Blake Fitzpatrick
Born(1955-07-21)21 July 1955
Oshawa, Ontario
EducationB.A.A. Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, Toronto; M.F.A. Ohio State University; PhD, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Blake Fitzpatrick FRSC is a photographer, curator and writer, who is concerned with the photographic representation of the nuclear era, contemporary militarism and the Berlin Wall as a mobile ruin.

Contents

Early years

Blake Fitzpatrick was born in 1955 in Oshawa, Ontario. [1] His earliest artistic influences came just after high school in the mid-1970s when he discovered The Americans by Swiss photographer Robert Frank. As a result, Fitzpatrick developed an interest in photography, which took him to Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, for his B.A.A.. Later, he discovered the work of the artist, theorist and teacher Allan Sekula, author of the seminal essay "On the Invention of Photographic Meaning," and studied with him at Ohio State University. He graduated in 1984 with a MFA, then got his PhD, from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. [2]

Career

Fitzpatrick made a long-term study of the history and effects of the uranium-processing industry on the town of Port Hope, Ontario, where he and his family were living. To describe what happened to this town, Fitzpatrick created an installation entitled Uranium Landscapes, first seen in an exhibition in Toronto in 1995. [3] Starting in 2019, he created a documentary titled Future Mound through photography, video and writing, based on the development of the Port Hope Long-Term waste Management Facility, an above-ground storage mound for radioactive waste – due to radium and uranium refining – deposited throughout Port Hope. It is the most expensive municipal cleanup in Canadian history with a budget of $1.28 billion in federal funding. [4] [5]

In 2008, Fitzpatrick had an exhibition of his recent work at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, curated by Maralynne Cherry. In 2014, Freedom Rocks: The Everyday Life of the Berlin Wall, a long-term collaborative project that he produced with artist and Ryerson colleague Vid Ingelevics was exhibited at the Goethe-Institut in Los Angeles and was published in photography journals. [6] The exhibition travelled widely and in different versions appeared elsewhere. [7]

Fitzpatrick is a member of the Atomic Photographers Guild, an international collective of more than 20 photographers committed to documenting the on-going nuclear activity of the post "mushroom cloud" atomic era. [8] [6] [9] He has curated or co-curated shows of contemporary artists who responded to zones of conflict and include War at a Distance: Visual Culture and the Framing of Public Conversations about Canadian Forces in Afghanistan; [10] Disaster Topographics; [11] and The Atomic Photographers Guild: Visibility and Invisibility in the Nuclear Era (2001). [12] In 2013, he co-curated an exhibition of the work of Arthur S. Goss, titled Arthur S. Goss: Works and Days for the Ryerson Image Centre. [13]

Fitzpatrick's writing and visual work have appeared in numerous journals and in edited collections including The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada (McGill-Queen's University Press (MQUP), 2011), Camera Atomica (Art Gallery of Ontario, 2015) and Through Post-Atomic Eyes (MQUP, 2020). He is co-editor of Critical Distance in Documentary Media (Palgrave Macmillan 2018) and contributed a chapter on the aerial image in contemporary documentary art for the volume. [14] In 2020, with R. D. Tredici, he wrote Port Hope in the Era of Nuclear Waste which was published in C. Lauzon and J. O’Brian (eds.), Through Post-Atomic Eyes (Montreal: MQUP).

Fitzpatrick has held a number of senior academic positions including the position of Dean, School of Design and Communication Arts at Durham College, Oshawa as well as Dean, Faculty of Art, at the Ontario College of Art and Design. [15] [4] He is presently a professor in the School of Image Arts, Ryerson University, Toronto and served as its chair [6] as well as being co-director of the Documentary Media Research Centre. [16] In 2020, he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada. [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuclear power</span> Power generated from nuclear reactions

Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear power plants. Nuclear decay processes are used in niche applications such as radioisotope thermoelectric generators in some space probes such as Voyager 2. Generating electricity from fusion power remains the focus of international research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Port Hope, Ontario</span> Municipality in Ontario, Canada

Port Hope is a municipality in Southern Ontario, Canada, approximately 109 km (68 mi) east of Toronto and about 159 km (99 mi) west of Kingston. It is located at the mouth of the Ganaraska River on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in the west end of Northumberland County. The private Trinity College School opened here in 1868.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Egerton Ryerson</span> Canadian educator and Methodist minister (1803–1882)

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Nuclear power in Canada is provided by 19 commercial reactors with a net capacity of 13.5 gigawatt (GW), producing a total of 95.6 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity, which accounted for 16.6% of the country's total electric energy generation in 2015. All but one of these reactors are located in Ontario, where they produced 61% of the province's electricity in 2019. Seven smaller reactors are used for research and to produce radiopharmaceuticals for use in nuclear medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madawaska Mine</span> Abandoned uranium mine in Ontario, Canada

Madawaska Mine (previously known as Faraday Mine) is a decommissioned underground uranium mine in Faraday, near the town of Bancroft, Ontario, which produced 9 million pounds (4,082 tonnes) of U3O8 concentrate, at an average ore grade of 0.1074%, during its two periods of production.

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Faraday is a township in the Canadian province of Ontario, located within Hastings County adjacent to the town of Bancroft.

Canada has an active anti-nuclear movement, which includes major campaigning organisations like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. Over 300 public interest groups across Canada have endorsed the mandate of the Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout (CNP). Some environmental organisations such as Energy Probe, the Pembina Institute and the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) are reported to have developed considerable expertise on nuclear power and energy issues. There is also a long-standing tradition of indigenous opposition to uranium mining.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cigar Lake mine</span> Uranium mine in Saskatchewan, Canada

The Cigar Lake Mine is a large high-grade underground uranium mine, located in the uranium-rich Athabasca Basin of northern Saskatchewan, Canada, at the south-west corner of Waterbury Lake. The deposit, discovered in 1981, is second in size of high-grade deposits only to the nearby McArthur River mine. Other deposits, such as Olympic Dam in Australia, contain more uranium but at lower grades.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uranium mining in Canada</span> Uranium mining in Canada

Canada is the world's second-largest producer of uranium, behind Kazakhstan. In 2009, 20% of the world's primary uranium production came from mines in Canada. 14.5% of the world production came from one mine, McArthur River. Currently, the only producing area in Canada is northern Saskatchewan, although other areas have had active mines in the past.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuclear industry in Canada</span>

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Maia-Mari Sutnik, was the first Curator of the Curatorial Department of Photography at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

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References

  1. "Blake Fitzpatrick". www.gallery.ca. National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
  2. Ingelevics, Vid. "Blake Fitzpatrick: Teach, Learn & Warn" (PDF). www.ocadu.ca. OCAD, Sketch 2004. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  3. "Blake Fitzpatrick – Radioactive History of Port Hope: Voices of Camera Atomica (3)". ago.ca. Art Gallery of Ontario. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
  4. 1 2 "Future Mound". www.ryerson.ca. Ryerson University, Toronto. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
  5. "Port Hope project new long term waste management facility". www.phai.ca. Port Hope, Ontario. Retrieved 26 August 2021.[ dead link ]
  6. 1 2 3 "Blake Fitzpatrick". www.ryerson.ca. Ryerson University, Toronto. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
  7. "Freedom Rocks". www.freedomrocks.ca. Ryerson University, Toronto. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  8. "Members". atomicphotographersguild.org. Atomic Photographers Guild. Retrieved 21 January 2024.
  9. "Atomic Photographers Guild" . Retrieved 11 August 2023.
  10. "War at a Distance". e-artexte.ca. e-artexte. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  11. Miao, Scarlett. "Disaster Topographics Critical Analysis". www.academia.edu. academia. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  12. The Atomic Photographers Guild : Visibility and Invisibility in the Nuclear Era. artexte. 2001. ISBN   9781894653039 . Retrieved 26 August 2021.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  13. "Arthur S. Goss: Works and Days". ryersonimagecentre.ca. Ryerson Image Centre. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  14. "Blake Fitzpatrick". www.ryerson.ca. Ryerson University, Toronto. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
  15. "Blake Fitzpatrick". opengovca.com. open government. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  16. "Blake Fitzpatrick". www.ryerson.ca. Ryerson University, Toronto. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
  17. "Blake Fitzpatrick elected to the Royal Society of Canada". ryerson.ca. Ryerson University, Toronto. Retrieved 26 August 2021.

Bibliography