The Canadian Centre for Architecture presents

Being There: Photography in Arthur Erickson’s Early Travel Diaries

This exhibition examines Erickson’s exchanges with people, places, landscapes, buildings, rituals, and ideas during his travels in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East between 1950 and 1952, and in Asia in 1961.

Arthur Erickson, Travel slide from Bali, Indonesia, ca. 1970s,

Arthur Erickson, Travel slide from Bali, Indonesia, ca. 1970s, Arthur Erickson Fonds, CCA. Gift of the Erickson Family ©Emily Erickson McCullum and Christopher Erickson

Curated by David Covo, Being There: Photography in Arthur Erickson’s Early Travel Diaries (Octagonal Gallery) is a geographic and thematic reading of Erickson’s photography, site notes, and correspondence, and a critical assessment of the impact of his early travels on his thinking and architectural work. The project is part of a longer, ongoing investigation at the CCA into the use of photography and new media as a means of studying the built environment. This new chapter explores how travel photography acts as a mode of notetaking and thinking in design practice.

Arthur Erickson (1924–2009) studied architecture at McGill University and graduated in the spring of 1950. With the support of a travelling scholarship, he spent the first two-and-a-half years of his career in North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. In the summer of 1961, at a moment when his work had already been
recognized with national awards, a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts enabled another five months of travel, this time in Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, and parts of Southeast Asia.

Sensitive to the interdependence of site and building that was evident in his early houses and even in his student work, Erickson believed, as he wrote in his application to the Canada Council for the Arts, that “the essence and meaning of the architecture of a culture remain evasive and hidden until experienced.” His approach to travel was rooted in the concept of genius loci: the ineffable quality of a place that is discovered only by being physically present. Erickson’s opportunity for prolonged time on site, conversation with his hosts, observation, and reflection created space for understanding new places and processing new ideas.

Arthur Erickson (photographer), Katsura Imperial Villa Garden, Kyoto, Japan, 1961

Arthur Erickson (photographer), Katsura Imperial Villa Garden, Kyoto, Japan, 1961, 120 reversal film. Arthur Erickson fonds, CCA. Gift of the Erickson Family
©Emily Erickson McCullum and Christopher Erickson

Erickson did not keep a journal, but he documented his early travels with his cameras, handwritten notes in guidebooks and on the backs of maps, and in the dozens of letters sent to family, friends, colleagues, and former teachers. Central to this exhibition are the 1961 letters from Japan, Macau, Cambodia, and Bali to his family and his former teacher, artist Gordon Webber, whom he cited as one of three major influences on his life, along with his mother, Myrtle Erickson, and painter Lawren Harris.

Coinciding with the exhibition opening, the Canadian Centre for Architecture released the article An Accumulation of Experiences, which juxtaposes Erickson’s slides with excerpts of letters he wrote
to Webber on his trip to Japan in 1961.

Together, Erickson’s photographs, site notes, and letters can be read as an informal travel diary, a vivid and intimate narrative of his architectural and cultural studies. The insights and ideas they revealed found further expression in public lectures, interviews, and journal articles produced within months of his return to Canada, defining him as a critic and teacher. They can be traced in projects that were underway while he was still in Japan, and they continued to inform the body of work that has come to define him as an architect.

A large selection of the objects in the exhibition are part of the Arthur Erickson Fonds held at the CCA. The first donation of the archive by Arthur Erickson dates to 1987, with additional gifts received between 1989 and 2004. More recently, in 2010 and 2013, the Erickson Family donated additional archival material.

For opening hours and ticket prices, visit: www.cca.qc.ca