La Petite Mort is a gallery in the Market. The name refers to an orgasm. We went to see Ottawa photographer Tony Fouhse’s latest show, User 3.

[Later: My mistake! This show is called User 2010, not User 3. Here is a link to Peter Simpson's review in the Ottawa Citizen:
http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2011/09/23/tony-fouhse-hangs-user-one-final-time/]

Here’s a link to the gallery’s website:
http://www.lapetitemortgallery.com/tony-fouhse/

For his User shows Fouhse, a commercial photog in his day job, gets drug users to pose for him on the corner of Cumberland and Murray. He uses a large format camera so all the pictures are square, and he sets up directly in front of his subjects. The pictures have a lot of immediacy, partly because of the relationships Fouhse has with his subjects, and partly because he is right in their faces.

I’ve been seeing these pictures online for years, and I wondered if I’d be more blown away seeing them in printed form. Not really. They aren’t framed, and they aren’t very big; I like them just as much or more online, where the colours are more vibrant.

The gallery has a large-format book of all the prints from the earlier User shows, and they are gorgeous. User 3 strikes me as a collection of leftovers. But Fouhse’s pics are all good photographs, no doubt about that. He is a highly skilled photographer, and his subtle photoshopping accentuates the eyes of the subjects, most of them staring straight into the camera.

Fouhse in his commentaries makes much of the pictures as political acts, a true record of the lives of the drug users he photographs. But what are we really seeing?

I like the pictures, but I see them less as a realistic account of the lives of drug users on that corner than as drug users posing as drug users so they can make a few bucks and get their picture taken. Some of them have become locally famous by being featured repeatedly in the Users shows and in Fouhse’s blog, drool.

I’m sure it’s a lot more interesting having Fouhse come around with his camera than enduring the endless panhandler shuffle that goes on there the rest of the time.

The other large work you see in my photo of the orgasm gallery (above) shows the aftermath of a car crash. The dead guy on the left has his erect penis exposed, much like the characters in David Cronenberg’s 1966 film Crash (not the 2004 Paul Haggis film), who take sexual pleasure from car accidents.

This is an exotic and unrealistic idea, and you might like it or you might not. Just like Tony Fouhse’s pictures of drug users in User 3.

In my opinion it is time for the artist to leave the drug users behind and move on to a new subject. I can’t wait to see what it will be!

Pic 919
Tomb of the unknown soldier

September 29, 2010

Two years ago:
Pic 589
Self-portrait on a dock

September 29, 2009

Three years:
Pic 230
Maple keys

September 29, 2008