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Avenue Art Gallery owner Marina Cutler prepares Dylan McDermott?s photos from Kenya and the Congo for exhibition. ?His gift as a photographer is the ability to snap a moment in time,? Cutler says, ?one that others can look at and experience that same emotion.?
Photograph by: Marie-France Coallier , The Gazette
The photos are haunting, depicting women and children staring intently yet cautiously into the camera. Their reaction is understandable: they are standing outside a home for sexually abused and battered women and their children in the Congo.
Another series of photos captures Masai warriors, in multi-coloured robes and with walking sticks, gathered in Kenya for their annual prayer for rain. The mood shifts in the photos from apprehension to a muted jubilation as prayers are answered and the skies open up.
Perhaps the Masai?s good-luck charm was the photographer, far away from home and even farther away from his day job.
Dylan McDermott, the New York actor best known for his work in such TV series as The Practice and American Horror Story and in such films as Olympus Has Fallen and In the Line of Fire, is the good-luck charm in question. His collection of 25 photos from the Congo and Kenya make up his first exhibition, which will be held at the Avenue Art Gallery in Old Montreal.
McDermott will be in attendance for the invitation-only preview on Friday. The show opens to the public Saturday and runs until the end of May. Proceeds from the sale of signed photos ? ranging in price from $400 to $800 ? will benefit the V-Day organization, a global movement to end violence against women and girls, inspired by Eve Ensler?s play The Vagina Monologues. As for the connection: Ensler is McDermott?s mother, who adopted him when he was a teen.
McDermott had gone to the Congo with Ensler for the opening of a V-Day-sponsored safe house. He has called his exhibition The Dylan Project: Make Some Noise, Stop Violence Against Women.
This exhibition represents quite the coup for Avenue Art Gallery?s owner, curator, promoter, salesperson and picture-hanger Marina Cutler.
?I happened to catch an interview with Dylan on TV, and he just happened to mention that he loved photography and then produced one of his photos,? says Cutler, in the midst of hanging McDermott?s photos at the gallery. ?I was overwhelmed. It was such a spectacular photo. So I got in touch with him, saw more of his work and presented the idea of his coming to Montreal and talking about his photography. He is such a down-to-earth guy, anything but a prima donna. His gift as a photographer is the ability to snap a moment in time, one that others can look at and experience that same emotion.?
Cutler was able to prevail upon McDermott to launch his first show at her gallery ? opening, not coincidentally, on Mother?s Day weekend. Cutler?s goal now is to bring this exhibition to New York and to showcase more of his work here in the future.
McDermott explains that going to the Congo with Ensler for the launch of the safe house led to an epiphany. ?It was so spectacular to witness the opening,? he says in a phone interview. ?These women were raped and their husbands threw them out, leaving them nowhere to go. They were abused over and over again. But now they have a place to go and get an education. Most importantly, they get to heal.
?I started taking pictures and as I got deeper and deeper into it, I was just floored. Then I went to Kenya and to another refuge, for girls trying to avoid genital mutilation. Then it was on to the Masai. And to have my camera with me to document, it was one of the richest experiences I?ve ever had. I didn?t feel distant from it all. I felt part of it. I didn?t want my photos to glamorize. I didn?t want to make them pretty. I just wanted to capture the internal beauty of the subjects.?
McDermott was particularly struck by the tears of joy from the Masai when their prayers for rain were answered. ?They were so grateful just to have rain. It?s beyond words. These people with so little are just so jubilant that they can have a drop of rain so they can eat. I spend so much time in New York and Los Angeles with people who have so much and who are so unhappy. Yet I went into a mud hut with this family and their goat, and they were maybe the happiest people I?ve met in my life. It was such a lesson to me that all the stuff we try to accumulate while we?re here really means so little.?
McDermott has been snapping away much of his life, often on home turf in New York. ?A lot of people take pictures. Essentially, everyone nowadays is a photographer. So it?s hard to get someone to step up and say: ?Hey, I believe in you.? Marina Cutler was the first person to do so.
?What?s difficult is that not everyone wants their picture taken. I understand. I was followed around today by some paparazzi as I was looking for a pair of glasses. I didn?t like it.?
McDermott?s photos may be in stark contrast to the impression many of his fans and fellow actors have of him. ?Perceptions are always made to be broken,? cracks McDermott, who is set to take off shortly for Bulgaria on a film shoot with Antonio Banderas, Jessica Alba, Winona Ryder and Lady Gaga. ?But I?m a slow burn. I never let people know too much about me.?
What is known, though, is that McDermott?s birth mother was tragically shot and killed when he was 5. ?I?m sure it all does (have an impact on me) somewhere. The important thing is as an artist you have to turn whatever happens to you into art. That?s certainly what I have tried to do with my life.?
Dylan McDermott?s photo exhibition The Dylan Project: Make Some Noise, Stop Violence Against Women runs from Saturday to the end of May at the Avenue Art Gallery, 731 de la Commune St. W., second floor. Call 514-867-3745 or visit avenueart.ca.
bbrownstein@montrealgazette.comTwitter: billbrownstein
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