Tony Foushe

Tony Foushe is a Canadian artist who has been working for the past 30 years, primarily in the realm of editorial and commercial photography.  He recently, however, garnered national attention and acclaim for a personal project of his revolving around heroin addicts in the Ottawa area.  This series was called "User" and featured various male and female subjects expressly for the purposes of documentation of addiction as well as empathy and the illustration of basic human emotion.






In Fouhse's sister collection, "Live Through This", he photographs one subject, Stephanie MacDonald, over a period of years in which the two developed a personal relationship with one another, even allowing Stephanie to live in his home he shared with his wife at one point.  When asked about how or why the relationship developed Fouhse expressed that normally he does not interact with his subjects, and deliberately avoids such interaction when dealing with addicts as it is often too difficult to attach emotion to the project and then, inevitably, end up in a negative situation.  Stephanie, however, was different.  As you can see in her progression, the camera captures an extreme loneliness and utter sensitivity that this woman is allowing herself to expose.  She is completely vulnerable and the immediate reaction for most is pity, however I see her as a complete warrior princess and the series as a whole being much more than a typical junkie exploitation that any teenager with an iPhone can pull off.

I am so completely drawn to this because of not only the subject matter, which I typically go for when it is done correctly, as in Larry Clark not Terry Richardson; but also because of the package as a whole.  From the title referencing the Hole album to the facial expressions and body detail of Stephanie to her clothing to the bleakness and simultaneous perfection of the piece.  The technical work is amazing.  There is no filler or hyper realism but somehow they still end up coming out pretty, and the sadness and the melancholy mixes together with intimacy and your father holding your hand on the first day of school and the viewer is wrapped up in binary emotion that ultimately feels just

right.