For over two decades, Gabor Gasztonyi has honed his photography skills.
Known for taking portraits of people, often from the Downtown Vancouver area, Gasztonyi does his best to make his subjects look their very best in his black and white images. Now he’s bringing a sample of that work to Parkside Art Gallery on April 13 in his solo show simply entitled Portrait.
“Taking a portrait is a profound privilege. The subject and the artist pursue each other and jostle to find familiar ground. They exchange hearts and share in the unease of the moment,” Gasztonyi said. “Portraits are often more about the artist than the subject, which is another mystery of the photographic image. Even though you’re taking a picture of someone, you always put yourself in that photograph as well.”
From a young age, Gasztonyi said he has always been fascinated with photography and imagery. Even as a child he owned a camera and enjoyed taking photographs of everything and anything.
He kept practising photography throughout his time working in the scaffolding business in Vancouver for many years. Despite getting around with crutches due to a childhood case of polio, Gasztonyi said he and his partner were able to run a successful business. Gasztonyi made enough money that he was able to buy a home on Sheridan Lake in 1990 where he still spends parts of the year to this day with his wife Judith Copeland.
In 2000 Gasztonyi sold his business and decided to get into photography professionally. Around this time his focus started to shift to primarily doing portraits of people to both capture their personality and document their lives.
“As you develop in photography you become a bit more professional and your eye develops a bit more. Documentary and portrait photography are basically my main loves,” Gasztonyi said. “Photography is a very emotional and visual endeavour.”
As his professional career started to blossom Gasztonyi opened up a portrait studio in New Westminister and has had his work featured in dozens of shows. He’s also published some of his photographs in books, including A Room In the City which chronicles the life of people living in hotels on Vancouver’s East Side.
Documenting the stories of the poor and those living with addiction in Vancouver is a cause close to Gasztonyi’s heart. Last year he released a documentary he shot himself on YouTube entitled No Way Out which followed the lives of two couples evicted from their homes.
Several of the photos he took during this time are included in Portrait alongside portraits he took while running his studio in New Westminster.
“A lot of the portraits are of writers, artists and poets in the Vancouver era and also people in the downtown east side of Vancouver I’ve taken over the years I thought were strong and needed to be exhibited,” Gasztonyi remarked.
Gasztonyi also included some photos of some women from Ethiopia for a project he did years ago and some recent pictures of Drag Queens he got last year at the Drag Queen Coronation Ceremony in New Westminister. While most of his work is in black and white, he chose to use colour for the Drag Queens.
One of his favourite photos in the show is his portrait of Harry Ashley. One of the main characters of No Way Out, the photograph depicts him with his arms crossed against a wall. Gasztonyi said that Ashley’s tattoos almost blend into the wall creating a very powerful image, made more so by the fact Ashley has since passed away.
“I’m there to capture the essence of his person and their inner feelings, as I see them. You don’t just have someone sitting there smiling at you for a head and shoulders shot, you need some edge to the image and a sense of what the person is about.”
All told Gasztonyi is bringing 40 pictures for Portrait, which Copeland helped him curate and frame. He chose the name Portrait to keep things simple. The show opens on April 13 at the Parkside Art Gallery with Gasztonyi being at the gallery from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. to chat about the show. The show runs until May 18.
“I’m just excited to bring the show to 100 Mile House. Most of the exhibits in 100 Mile are sculptures and paintings of landscapes, but this is more of an edgy Vancouver-style exhibit that doesn’t usually come up to that area,” Gasztonyi remarked. “Hopefully people will enjoy viewing my photos in 100 Mile House.”
