George Steeves

Date of birth & Location: 1943 | Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

One of Canada's great photographers, George Steeves has the anonymity in his native country that afflicts many of the Great White North's best artists. Unless you are an aficionado of contemporary Canadian photography you will have probably never heard of the man. But once you are introduced to his work (especially his more erotic and intimate series of works starting with Ellen Pierce in 1981) you will be irreversibly changed.

Born in Moncton, New Brunswick in 1943, Steeves has made Halifax his home since 1973. A self taught artist, he began his education with an 8 X 10 view camera back in the early 70s focusing on landscape photography. He worked at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography after receiving his engineering degree at various post secondary institutions including Carleton University in Ottawa. He retired in 2006.

A meeting with performance artist Ellen Pierce at the MSVU Art Gallery in 1981 made Steeves change his focus from the outdoors to the expressionism of the human body. Called Pictures of Ellen it is one of Steeves most recognizable series of shots. Since the Pierce shots, Steeves has gone on to work with Astrid Brunner, Lianne Heller and Tim Dunn among others.

Because George Steeves creates long term relationships with his subjects (spending more time away from the camera creating lasting and close relationships) his photographs are best described as very intimate and vulnerable. None of his subjects can be considered model-like, and Steeves doesn't try to hide any physical flaws (if you can call the marks on your body from living and aging a flaw) so his pictures can also be difficult to view. Uncomfortable and perhaps voyeuristic, vulnerable, grotesque, sexually explicit, erotic, graphic and beautiful are a few of the adjectives attributed to his work.

His works have been shown in Halifax (Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, 2007), Ottawa (Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, 1993), Montreal (Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts). Halifax (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1989), and Denmark (Louisiana Museum of Modern Art). He also has photographs included in the collection at the National Gallery of Canada.

Written by The Staff of Full Spectrum


George Steeves - MSVUart
George Steeves - Wikipedia
George Steeves - Shakespeare in Canadian Art