City by night
The photography of Curtis Perry
I’ve sent you a lot of words over the last few weeks. Here are some photos.
Performers and audiences in Ottawa over the last couple of years have noticed somebody new chronicling the city’s concerts and club dates. Curtis Perry, an Ottawa high-school teacher and freelance photographer, began working with a few local performing-arts organizations. I noticed him when the National Arts Centre Orchestra posted his photos on their Facebook page after one of the orchestra’s quirky “WolfGANG Sessions” concerts of contemporary chamber music. Later, this spring, he photographed an Ottawa Writers’ Festival panel on which I was a participant. One way to describe his photography is that it’s more vivid than your memory of the event.
Perry’s colours are vivid — he uses Fujifilm GFX and X digital cameras — but what’s striking is the intimacy of his images. He has a degree in musicology. Somewhere along the way he learned about the form and pacing of a concert — where musicians stand, how they move — so he knows where to be to get the best photos. The extraordinary photo of Noise Hotel guitarist Eric Montpool, above, is an example. That’s a 24mm lens. The guitar would almost have been touching it.
On Saturday, an exhibition of Perry’s concert photographs, In The Moment, will open at Red Bird Live, a live-music space and café in Old Ottawa South. Here are some of the photos from that show. Click on the photos to see them even bigger. Better yet, if you’re in Ottawa, go to Red Bird Live and see them on walls.
Oh, and I forgot to mention: He has a Substack! https://curtisperry.substack.com/
Great post Paul. The photos are wonderful and a reminder that there is more to Ottawa than we see on the national news (as most of your posts remind us)!