Culture pick: Flash Forward Festival highlights emerging photographers

This year, the Magenta Foundation has taken their popular Flash Forward competition, which highlights the talent of up-and-coming photographers from Canada, the U.S. and the U.K, and turned it into a festival. The gallery show has been expanded to six curated exhibits and they’ve added workshops, lectures and panel discussions on such pictorial topics as marketing oneself in the fine art market to the future of photobooks in the digital age. All of the venues, including the all-Canadian show Where is Here, and almost all of the external events are free to access, so even if you don’t have an image on display you can learn about the industry and what it takes to be the next Robert Mapplethorpe or Cindy Sherman. The photographs range in their context—dramatic shots of soldiers, snapshots of odd suburbanites and stills of decaying architecture—with photographers taking the role of silent observer or composer of a scene. The Flash Forward Festival runs October 6 to 10, with venues throughout Liberty Village in Toronto (a complete schedule and map can be found at flashforwardfestival.com).

Click the images below to see a gallery from the Flash Forward Festvial