2024 Festival ← Core Exhibition

Strange Love

May 1–Jul 27
Urbanspace Gallery
C. R. Yool (1923–2006), Scientists Pat Holden and Norman Harrison look into the test chamber of the ISIS A Satellite, 1965. CMCP Archive, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives (NFB 65-2587)
C. R. Yool (1923–2006), Scientists Pat Holden and Norman Harrison look into the test chamber of the ISIS A Satellite, 1965. CMCP Archive, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives (NFB 65-2587)

Post-Second World War culture displayed curious and contradictory preoccupations. The atom—both “friendly” and deadly—appeared across a variety of settings. Visions of conquering space displayed optimism and faith in scientific progress and the anxiety of the unknown. Television shows, cartoons, novels, and films featured utopian futures of peace and plenty, and the wasteland of nuclear devastation. Photographers conveyed this intensity through vivid imagery, close cropping, unusual angles, and extreme lighting. Drawing upon the National Film Board’s collection of historical documentary photographs held at the National Gallery of Canada and Library and Archives Canada, this exhibition expresses the drama of the period, the propagandistic battle of the cold war, and the strange love of technologies whose effect on human destiny played out as an eternal struggle between good and evil.

Ted Grant (1929–2020), Technician working with manipulators, 1967. CMCP Archive, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives (NFB 67-10054)

Curated by Andrea Kunard

Organized by the National Gallery of Canada, presented in partnership with Library and Archives Canada and CONTACT

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