Fine art photographer Cindi Emond is a Montreal native. Best known for her dramatic portraits of people, cityscapes and landscapes, Emond has travelled Europe, Asia and beyond ever on the lookout for unconventional subjects and creating work that embodies vivid story telling.
“Whether trekking in the jungle of Borneo, the rain forest in Northern Thailand, or the Himalayas in Ladakh, India, I am always shooting work in the field, capturing environmental portraits that give the viewer a vivid, visual representation of my experience,” says Emond.
Emond initially moved to Toronto to do her BFAH training in photography, graphic art and art history at York University. Among her photographic influences are the street photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, and Vivian Maier and the work of Geoffrey James, photography laureate of her native city of Toronto.
An expat who has resided in Rome, Italy for the past 20 years, Emond is also a sommelier, runner, scuba diver and skier.
What hood are you in?
I return to Toronto four times a year to see family and friends. From 2012-2016, while I was living back in Toronto in the Summer Hill and Yonge area, I loved being able to walk everywhere and enjoy sitting at cafes drinking $6.00 cappuccinos! You’d get shot in Rome if you tried to charge that!
What do you do?
I teach to make a living and photograph to make art. I haunt museums and contemporary art fairs like the Biennale, the Art and Architecture Fairs, Frieze Art Fair, Art Toronto and Art Basel to get my inspiration.
What are you currently working on?
I’m happy to be back in Toronto for my first solo exhibition, Circumnavigation, in the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival. Then I’ll head back to Rome where I have to complete the International Sommelier exam. This summer, I plan to go to Champagne in France and shoot the vineyards and producers, and I am going to shoot an installation of over 100 mammoth canvases for the Street Art Museum in Amsterdam. Toronto’s own creative talents Clandestinos, visual artists Shalak Attack and Bruno Smoky have a canvas they collaborated on in the collection. I shot them in a studio in Toronto, as well as hugely talented British graffiti artist Dale Grimshaw in his studio in London. The three visual artists met while painting their respective works for the museum’s collection in Amsterdam at the same time. Lastly, I am going on the next mission of Operation Smile, out of Italy, to document the work that the surgeons do in developing countries.
Where can we find your work?
My new show Circumnavigation consists of 45 images seen on seven large screens at Creeds Coffee Bar at 390 Dupont St., May 1 – 31. You can also find me on Instagram @cindi_emond and my website www.cindiemondphotography.com.
