CAPIC Legends
The pieces presented below from each of the Legends were showcased in the 2023 Xposé exhibition.
Xposé 2023 CAPIC Legends
- Barbara Cole
- Ron Baxter-Smith
- Myron Zabol
- George Simhoni
- Bob Wigington
CAPIC Legends is generously sponsored by our partner:
Barbara Cole
Barbara Cole is a fine art photographer working in several photographic mediums, including underwater photography and modernized wet collodion. She was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1953. Her work is noted for its ethereal imagery depicting figures in various states of weightlessness, transformation, and self-actualization. As an innovator in her field, Cole’s use of traditional and inventive techniques is part of her ongoing search for timelessness. She has held numerous exhibitions across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Her work has also been extensively commissioned internationally for corporate collections. She has exhibited in the Canadian Embassy in both Tokyo and Washington D.C. The acclaimed documentary series Snapshot: The Art of Photography II, features an episode devoted exclusively to Cole’s photographic practice. Barbara Cole publishes Between Worlds, a comprehensive book chronicling decades of her photographic practice, published by teNeues publishing house on June 28, 2023 (US).
Barbara Cole – Surfacing
Ron Baxter Smith
Ron Baxter Smith is an artist, photographer, and director who currently divides his time between Italy and Canada. As an assignment photographer and director, he has worked in the UK, USA, Italy, and his home country of Canada. He has been the recipient of over 500 awards, which includes 80 medals, for his photography and television commercials in the USA, UK, Canada, and Japan. He has been the recipient of The Heart of Umbria, Italy Award and a year’s Canada Council Grant. His work is in the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago, The AIGA, The National Gallery and The National Portrait Gallery of Canada, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Art Gallery of Ontario, The Royal Ontario Museum, and more.
Ron Baxter Smith – Roses
Myron Zabol
“Zabol’s work represents the exploration of time. He meticulously creates scenes, space, lighting, and people as a tableau. He weaves textures and uses light, color, costumes, and people to create a rich tapestry of life, juxtaposed against time. His highly curated objects, fashion, settings, and even his recording of native peoples are his testament to the perception of his own time here. The photographs represent time as a rich, full cycle of life, place, energy, dignity, and decay.
Myron Zabol was born in a small prairie town in Saskatchewan. He still remembers the scents of the prairie grass, the sight and sounds of grasshoppers, gophers, crows, tumbleweeds, and the endless prairie wind. Perhaps the start of his interest in photography was the shapeshifter that lurked on the prairie’s vivid landscape.
Attracted by the city’s burgeoning arts and music scenes, Zabol opened his first studio in Toronto in the early 1970s, on the top floor of the fabled Art Metropole building. He quickly gained a reputation for his creative and individualistic style in the city’s editorial, fashion, and advertising industries.
Myron’s work has received recognition from the Toronto, Montreal, and New York Art Directors Club Awards, as well as the National Magazine Awards. In the early 1990’s he received a United Nations Marketing Award for his work with the Kenya Wildlife Fund.
Zabol is also the author of “People Of The Dancing Sky”, an innovative photographic book that brings history to life, showing the Iroquois people as they live today, through the filter of their resilient traditions. With his expertly captured images of faith-keepers, jingle dancers, chiefs, clan mothers, children, lacrosse champions, potters, and teachers, Myron offers a unique view of the “People Of The Longhouse” and their time-honored way of expressing spirituality through dress and decoration.
Traveling exhibitions from this series of portraits have been permanently archived and administered by Canada’s National Gallery, the “Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography” and curated by the Iroquois “Woodland Cultural Center”, Brantford, Ontario. His work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, and internationally, and placed into private and corporate collections.
Myron Zabol – Shadow Kiss
George Simhoni
One part photographer, one part storyteller, George’s photos have been described as a blend of art and photography. He’s become a master of capturing layers of emotion in a single image. Since co-founding Westside Studio in Toronto in 1985, George has shot for many of the world’s major brands and brought home numerous international awards. But that’s not what he gets excited about. He says, “If I can stop someone and give them a momentary thoughtful pause, a smile, or a thought, then I have accomplished my mission.” When George isn’t in the studio or on location, he’s tending to his small herd of egg-laying chickens.
George Simhoni – California Fog
Robert Wigington
After briefly studying geology at Queens University I started processing black and white film at TDF, a large catalogue studio in Toronto working my way up to assistant. I joined John Sebert, a fashion and people photographer and started shooting food. I opened my own studio in 1972 and retired in 2010. I then bought a touring bike and Cycled across Canada. I continue to do self-sufficient bike touring with some photography thrown in here and there. It’s been a wonderful life!
Robert Wigington – Girl with bananas