Portfolio Three, completed in November 2000, continued and further developed the idea of producing a limited-edition portfolio of student work and writing to reflect the issues addressed in the upper-level elective course NPF 548, Movements and Issues in Contemporary Photography.

Forty-two students from all three production options in Image Arts participated in the making of this project. Design elements were developed by Stephen Lussier and Balint Zsako (whose cover design is reproduced here), and all text editing was contributed by Stephen Lussier and Ryan Lower. Prof. Wayne Pittendreigh and staff of the Image Arts PIC Lab helped produce the cover, masthead pages and digital image components of the finished portfolio, whose many possible titles are shown on the accompanying image at left.

As was the practice for the two preceding projects, each student contributed an original image, in either photographic or digital format, and wrote a descriptive statement about the making of their selected image in relation to their larger artistic practice and their understanding of contemporary theory. Excerpts from each statement were printed along with a thumbnail image in the introductory pages of the portfolio, and original prints were made for each complete portfolio set. Each student kept one copy; additional copies were archived in the School of Image Arts, Special Collections in the Ryerson Library, and the Mira Godard Study Centre, now part of the Peter Higdon Research Centre at the Ryerson Image Centre. A full set of artist statements was bound separately and included as part of each portfolio.

Participants whose work is reproduced in the downloadable pdf include Kara Kosaka, Brenda Brizuela, Chris Gonzaga, Amanda Shear, Balint Zsako, Joseph Paget, Brenda Liu and Matthew Foley. The portfolio was introduced by a quotation from Henri Cartier-Bresson:

I fully recognize how fragmentary [the] image is, but so much is certain: it represents my visual discovery faithfully.

…to those who ask me, “What did you see?” I reply:”Let my work speak for me.” These pictures are meant for them.