Bystanders

“Chance is an enigmatic aspect of human experience. It determines whom we meet and what we encounter. Chance can be fortuitous, or it can be a stroke of bad luck. Its impact can meaningfully alter our life’s course or become a bump on the road that we scarcely remember. For street photographers chance is monumental. It is something they seek, anticipate and, in a split second, capture.

Armed with a camera and few preconceptions, street photographers enter public spaces as “bystanders” to the scenes that unfold before them. They raise their cameras and hold a mirror to everyday life, hoping to capture a candidness that cannot escape the physiognomy and accuracy of the medium. They bide for a moment when the elements of a compelling image come together with clarity—a moment that leading twentieth-century photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson famously described as “the decisive moment.”

The images selected for this exhibition, from the collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, offer a diverse range of subjects captured throughout Alberta and abroad over the course of four decades. From a ballerina standing “centre stage” in a crowd to a barber peering out from the doorway of his shop, what unifies this body of work is the genre. Each photograph contains a scene made significant by the photographer in its capture and nostalgic by time in its passing—decisive moments made memorable by chance.”