10 February – 22 May 2022

Dona Schwartz conducts a social experiment through photographic portraiture. Initially inspired by Yoko Ono’s instruction to photograph “ordinary people” Schwartz approached the prompt by interrogating its premise. Who do we consider “ordinary”? How is “ordinary” defined? Schwartz worked collaboratively with her subjects. She used a referral process that spawned multiple distinct lineages of portrait subjects, starting with people she’d met through daily dog walks. The resultant series maps social networks and the boundaries of everyday lived communities. The work poses questions about self-concepts, identities, and labels that simultaneously unite us and keep us apart.

Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, ed. Christine A. Lindberg (Apple Dictionary App, version 2.3, 2020), s.v. “ordinary”

He's just an ordinary middle-aged man | my life seemed very ordinary: average, normal, run-of-the-mill, standard, typical, middle-of-the-road, common, conventional, mainstream, unremarkable, unexceptional, unpretentious, modest, plain, simple, homely, homespun, workaday, undistinguished, nondescript, characterless, colorless, commonplace, humdrum, mundane, unmemorable, pedestrian, prosaic, quotidian, uninteresting, uneventful, dull, boring, uninspiring, bland, suburban, hackneyed, stale, mediocre, middling, indifferent; North American garden-variety; informal OK, so-so, bog-standard, vanilla, plain vanilla, nothing to write home about, a dime a dozen, no great shakes, not up to much, corny, hacky; British informal common or garden; North American informal ornery.

Antonyms: unusual, extraordinary, unique, exceptional.

Dona Schwartz, *Self-Portrait* (2022), Ordinary People (Like Me) Series (2020).

Artist Statement

Ordinary People (Like Me) is a social experiment conducted through photographic portraiture. Initially inspired by a Yoko Ono instruction to photograph “ordinary people” I expanded the project and approached the prompt by interrogating its premise. Who do we consider “ordinary”? How is “ordinary” defined? The instruction summoned an uncomfortable awareness that the act of identifying and photographing “ordinary” people would presuppose scrutiny, judgment, categorization, and privilege.

Instead of making those judgements myself, I chose to work collaboratively. I began by photographing a handful of people I’ve met through daily dog walks, and I asked if they would recruit one or two other “ordinary” people for the project. This process spawned multiple distinct lineages of portrait subjects. I followed the referrals wherever they led me, excited to meet the next generation of “ordinary” Calgarians.

I photographed people at their homes, environments that speak to the values and experiences that play a role in shaping our lives. I worked with my subjects to identify places to shoot that would best represent who they are and how they live, whom and what they love.

The paths the referrals traced repeatedly led back to people like me. My method failed to yield the diverse representation of “ordinary” people I had hoped would naturally materialize. Instead of branching out, the resultant series of images map existing social networks and the boundaries of everyday lived communities. The work achieves its ends by posing questions about self-concepts and identities, and the labels that simultaneously unite us and keep us apart.

Learn more about the sitters in Ordinary People (Like Me) through our digital gallery.

You’re Invited to Collaborate with the Artist on Instagram

The Ordinary People Photo Project invites the community to engage with the work of Calgary-based artist Dona Schwartz in anticipation of her upcoming solo exhibition Ordinary People (Like Me).

Extending the collaboration, members of the public can take part in the project by creating and uploading their own photo of an "ordinary" person along with a sentence defining what an "ordinary" person is. This content will be reshared to @OrdinaryPeopleYYC and it will be featured in the exhibition.

To learn more and take part in this project, please see @OrdinaryPeopleYYC

To see examples of submissions, please see #OrdinaryPeopleYYC

Instructions

1. Take a photo of an ordinary person
2. Complete the sentence “An ordinary person is ______________.”
3. Upload your photo and completed sentence to your own Instagram with #OrdinaryPeopleYYC

Once you’ve uploaded your content to Instagram, the Ordinary People Project Team will select photos to re-post on the @OrdinaryPeopleYYC page. They’ll notify you via Instagram message if they post your photo.

For the project’s terms and conditions, please see our Terms & Conditions post.

About the Artist

Dona Schwartz is a photographic artist based in Calgary, Alberta. She received her PhD from the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania with a focus on photography and ethnography. Through her photographic work she examines definitions of family, evolving identity, social bonds and boundaries. Proceeding from her perspective as a visual ethnographer, her investigations involve long-term engagement with subjects, resulting in richly layered photographic series and narratives. Inspired as a teenager by the work of André Kertész, she approaches photography with insight, wit, and humour.

Her award-winning photographs have been exhibited and published internationally. She has authored four books: Waucoma Twilight: Generations of the Farm (Smithsonian,1992), Contesting the Super Bowl (Routledge, 1997), In the Kitchen (Kehrer, 2009) and On the Nest (Kehrer, 2015). Her work is included in the collections of the United States Library of Congress; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne; the George Eastman Museum; the Center for Creative Photography; the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas-Austin; the Portland Art Museum; and the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. Schwartz is Professor, Department of Art, University of Calgary. She is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto.