April 2007
La Petite Mort Gallery / Photographs by Maggie Knaus entitled “Palimpsests: A Voyeur’s Journal” / April 6 – May 2, 2007
Vernissage: Friday, April 6, 2007 / 7-10pm
Daughter of a spy captures private moments on film
OTTAWA – Award-winning local photographer Maggie Knaus comes from a family of spies, but when it came time to choose a career for herself, she opted to put her voyeuristic genes to artistic use.
In a new exhibit opening at La Petite Mort Gallery in the Byward Market on Friday, April 6, Knaus offers a collection of photographs that capture the private moments of people in public spaces. “Seeking to document strangers, I find myself returning to the habits of a spy, waiting and watching. This voyeuristic approach gives me two different perspectives. The first of an outsider looking in. The second of finding myself, or rather my feelings, reflected in a scene,” Knaus says.
Her surreptitious photos were taken on various trips and include a bather in a Budapest public bath, a tired-looking little girl dressed as a fairy at the New Orleans Mardi Gras, and young lovers in a quiet Berlin café . “I am the daughter of a spy. My father was a career covert CIA agent,” says Knaus, whose uncle also worked for the U.S. spy agency and whose mother was also an analyst at the Agency during the Cold War.
“Each time my family would go to a restaurant, my father would drift out of conversations, tip back his chair and cock his head to listen in on the table next to us. At various intervals, he would lean forward and report snippets of these overheard conversations. ‘It’s a first date and I don’t think it’s going too well.’ He wasn’t on the clock, this was sport.”
Knaus, originally from Washington, D.C., also developed a keen interest in strangers as her father’s job took the family around the world while she was growing up. Their stops included a stint in Ottawa in the late 70s, where Knaus attended Lisgar Collegiate Institute while her father was the senior CIA representative at the U.S. embassy.
After graduating from college, Knaus had her own job interview with the CIA, but it came to a speedy end when she blurted out: “I can’t really keep a secret. I don’t know what I’m doing here.” Instead, she ultimately decided to bare her soul – and also hunt for secrets and hidden meanings – from behind a camera lens.
Knaus, who has returned to live in Canada with her husband and young daughters, teaches at the School of Photographic Arts in Ottawa and regularly works for Ottawa Magazine. She previously taught at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where she also had a studio at the U.S. capital’s renowned Torpedo Factory. Her commissions have included work for the White House Historical Association ranging from snapshots of President Bush’s dog, Barney, to portraits of White House staff, including the pastry chef and gardener for the book, The White House, An Illustrated History.
Knaus has exhibited her work in galleries across the United States. Her latest show, called Palimpsests: A Voyeur’s Journal, is only her second Canadian exhibition. In this collection, she had in mind the notion of palimpsests — writings on top of writings. “Instead of a literal representation, I was interested in a more metaphoric one. I began by photographing people in public spaces depicting one layer of a human being.… It soon became clear that these images not only captured people in a certain time and place, but they also became fragments of my own life.”
The exhibit opens to the public on April 6, from 7 to 10 p.m. and runs until May 2.
Marci,
Guy Berube, director
La Petite Mort Gallery