The enormous impact of technology was clearly evident in much of the photography presented in this year’s festival on the constructed image. While we questioned whether the increasing popularity of constructed modes of working was leading to the demise of traditional photography, we celebrated the great effects to which constructed images could address major events of global significance. It is quite relevant that this years theme developed from the thematic focus of our last two festivals, Questioning Truth in Photography and Imaging a Global Culture, which both clearly revealed how constructed image making was a vital tool for so many.

Now we look towards next year and take our inspiration from some of the great works in this year’s festival. While of course they utilized various constructed modes of working, they also explored a variety of the most basic of social subjects – from private experiences to family histories. So it appears that our focus on the global has brought us back to the importance of the personal. Whether based on fact or molded through fiction, these images have reminded us of the fundamental splendor of photography to “capture the moment”.

Is this reinvention of social documentary as a constructed fiction challenging our relationship with the photographic image as a receptacle for the storage of memories? How do these constructed images co-exist with those that continue to represent “real” social situations? These questions invite a consideration of the evolution of the tradition of social documentary photography. Here too we now find a renewed interest in exploring personal and collective societal issues. To what extent do these subjective images contribute to a new contemporary reality, and at what point does personal observation become history?

The rapid pace of technology continues to diversify the ways in which we encounter and negotiate photographs on a daily basis. Images are transmitted to a global audience at record speed via the Internet, while cell-phone cameras are commonplace at every social event we attend. We are overwhelmed with images of our daily life, yet somehow depictions of the everyday remain a fundamental source of inspiration and pleasure for all of us. These great contrasts in the ways the ever-multiplying technologies of photography are utilized to document our personal and collective experience, call for an investigation of photography’s relationship to the forms of memory produced through these different types of social documentary. It is with these issues and questions in mind that we have entitled the thematic focus of CONTACT 2008 Between Memory and History.

This theme will undoubtedly enable us to explore the richness and complexity of imagery depicting social relations and provide fertile ground for discovery, discussion and debate - from explorations of photography as a surrogate for memory to reconstructions of history through photographic representation. We welcome your participation and look forward to once again showcasing the great community efforts that continue to grow in scope and scale and have made the CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival the great success it is today.