Since the mid-1990s I’ve worked consistently as a photojournalist for newspapers and magazines. I also edited a couple: SEE Magazine (RIP) in Edmonton, the Spruce Grove Examiner / Stony Plain Reporter.

 

Since the nineties I’ve also had a mixed media art practice using video, photography, and sound as basic materials.

 

In 2004 avant jazz artist John Zorn decided it was time to release some of my early music on his label, Tzadik Records. A lot of this material was from the ’90s which wasn’t the best time for me, but I was pretty happy I got to use some of my visual artwork as part of the CD cover design. Eventually “Mike Pathos – People” was released to strong critical reviews and international attention.

 

Since 2009 I’ve shown my photography in at least one group show per year, including:

 

• 3 Bedfordbury Gallery in London, UK (‘beautiful landscape’, 2009);

• Gallery Forward in Batley, UK (‘untitled’, 2010);

• Gallery Forward in Batley, UK (‘refracted landscape’, 2010);

• VAAA Gallery in association with The Works, in Edmonton, Canada (‘Diversity 2010’);

• Kaasa Gallery in Edmonton, Canada (‘Open Photo 2010’);

• Mota Italic in Berlin, Germany (‘New Vintage Vernacular Letters’, 2012); and

• Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, Calgary (‘Open Digital’, 2013).

• My first solo show was ‘VERSATILE’, at the Artery in Edmonton, AB in 2011.

• Project Instant v4.0 – RetroGratification at Telus World of Science as part of Capture Photo Festival, 2017.

 

After graduating with a B.A. in English from the University of Calgary, I went to London to study with Alan Fisher (producer of Björk’s Post among many greats), completing my M.A. from the University of Wesminster in 2002. Later in 2008 I finished an LL.B. from the University of London (England).

 

Today I’m a recent convert to West Coast urban living, currently residing in Vancouver's East Village.

 

***

 

Favorite quotes:

 

"My thought is the term 'documentary' is inexact, vague, and even grammatically weak, as used to describe a style in photography which happens to be my style. Further, that what I believe is really good in the so-called documentary approach in photography is the addition of lyricism

"Further, that the lyric is usually produced unconsciously and even unintentionally and accidentally by the cameraman – with certain exceptions. Further, that when the photographer presses for the heightened documentary, he more often than not really misses it. ...

"The real thing that I'm talking about has purity and a certain severity, rigor, simplicity, directness clarity, and it is without artistic pretension in a self-conscious sense"

- Walker Evans, "Lyric Documentary" lecture at Yale, 3/11/64

 

"The illiterates of the future will be the people who know nothing of photography rather than those who are ignorant of the art of writing." - Walter Benjamin (1928)

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  • JoinedJuly 2007
  • OccupationPhotographer
  • HometownVancouver
  • Current cityVancouver
  • CountryCanada

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