Evergon (born Albert Jay Lunt, 1946), also known by the names of his alter-egos Celluloso Evergoni, Egon Brut, and Eve R. Gonzales, is a Canadian artist, teacher and activist.

Career

He was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, studied at Mount Allison University and graduated with a master’s degree in fine arts from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1974. Throughout his career, his work has explored photography and its related forms, including photo-collage, instant photography (discontinued Polaroid), colour photocopying, and holography.

Major themes in his work include personal sexuality, gender construction, aging, and body image. His work frequently includes art historical references as well as questioning accepted interpretations of certain canonical art. He was among the artists of the 1960s and 1970s who reacted against of the conventions of studio photography established through the post-World War II period. Since the mid-to late 1970’s, he has explored photographic technology in his work. 

In 1988, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography organized a major retrospective of his work, Evergon: 1971-1987, which was exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada and toured nationally and internationally. Through his 1996 five-month residency at the Bradford Photography Fellowship, Evergon exhibited a major solo retrospective at the UK-based National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, which was accompanied by an Evergon 1987-1997 catalogue. His work is included in many public collections, including the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography; the National Gallery of Canada; the Edmonton Art Gallery; the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; the Art Institute of Chicago; the International Center of Photography, NY; George Eastman House, Rochester, NY; the Polaroid International Collection, Frankfurt, Germany; Musée de l’Élysée, Lausanne; and many others.

Evergon’s work has been recognized with awards from the Canada Council and Petro-Canada. In 1987, he was the recipient of the Canada Council’s Victor-Martyn-Lynch-Staunton Award for his work with large format photography and in 1990 he received the Petro-Canada’s Art and Technology Award for his work in holography. He taught at the University of Ottawa; Emily Carr School of Art, Vancouver, BC; Brock University, St. Catherines; the Ontario College of Art, Toronto; School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Bradford College and the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, West Yorkshire, England. He retired in 2015 after being Associate Professor of Photography at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec since 1999. He currently lives and works in Montreal and is a professor emeritus at Concordia University.