Bulger Collection 2020
Bulger Collection
“Collecting is complete madness.”– Sam Wagstaff
This exhibition will bring for public viewing, a curated selection of vintage wedding photographs from the private collection of distinguished Canadian gallerist and photography specialist Stephen Bulger. International in scope and reflecting the history of photography, these images will reveal the wedding as a complex and surprising social phenomenon far beyond the simplistic assumptions of its idealization.
A rare and unique visual offering, curator Guy Bérubé will bring his own photographic sensitivity to the selection of works within a carefully designed presentation format that will allow the exhibition’s many layers of meaning to surface.
“Chances are that if you know nothing, you’re going to pick out exactly the same favorite photo as the guy who knows the most.” – Sam Wagstaff
For Bérubé, a major influence is curator and collector, Sam Wagstaff (1921 – 1987), whose influence in bringing the acceptance of photography to high art has been a touchstone throughout his own career as an art dealer and collector with his own passionate relationship to photography. Indeed, it is a great honor and privilege for Bérubé that Bulger has entrusted him with this collection for its public viewing.
The exhibition will be of interest to many audiences: those interested in photography and its varied technologies and modalities from vernacular, to portraiture, to photojournalistic. It will also speak to broad audiences who will be pulled into the stories captured in these moments and who can relate to the images through their own experience of weddings: from the joyous to the catastrophic.
“It may be that the way to tell a great photograph is to have it not remind you of art at all.”– Sam Wagstaff
The international and historical scope offers a global window on the idea and experience of marriage, its myriad rituals and circumstances. Curators and collectors will find the sub themes of collecting and how collections create meaning an interesting entry into the exhibition. This anthropologic view through the collection is made possible only because of the history of photography itself and its lineage of aficionados, like Wagstaff & Bulger.