Transitions was the first public exhibition of Shepherd’s work. Shot and produced in 2007 for a new gallery space in the Centennial College Pape Campus that was organized and made possible by the wonderfully kind David McClyment.
This is also the earliest legal subway work that the artist produced. Through a cooperative program between the TTC and Contact Photography Festival made possible by another Toronto artist, Sharon Switzer, Chris was able to obtain legal permits for shooting in the TTC underground. These permits had in the past been difficult to obtain and financially prohibitive to purchase.
The title for Transitions derived from the artist’s predilection for stairway, hall, escalator and other transitional spaces within the underground. It’s was also a vague reference to taking digital photographs and transitioning to printing and display of those images.
The show consisted of 13, 24″ x 36″ chromogenic prints, protected by a matte laminate and mounted on dibond.
Although a commercial failure, a work from Transitions was later donated to Toronto Photographer Workshop’s annual Photorama fundraiser where it sold multiple copies and proved instrumental in introducing Shepherd’s work to the Toronto contemporary art market and Bau-Xi Photo owner Tien Huang and artist/curator Robyn McCallum.
