Tony Fouhse’s Official Ottawá is Mounties without music, Parliament without pageantry

Mounties without music. Parliament without pageantry.

This is Ottawa, but not the one you know.

This is Official Ottawa. And Official Ottawa is the work of Tony Fouhse.

Left: National Firefighters Memorial Service; Right: Russian Embassy. Photos by Tony Fouhse

Official Ottawa is a photographic study of Canada’s capital city as the seat of power – specifically, of federal power. A tabloid of 44 pictures and a brief essay by Ottawa journalist Phil Jenkins, Official Ottawa studies the ways that power manifests itself in “the architecture, functionaries, and tableaux” that embody that federal presence.

“These images strip the capital down to its bones by simply showing the architecture, functionaries and tableaux that represent aspects of the federal presence here. These are the people, places and things folks in Ottawa walk by every day and barely notice.” – Tony Fouhse

Official Ottawa is Tony’s first major project since Live Through This, his story in portraits of Ottawa heroin addict Stephanie and her struggles to get clean.

The differences between the two could not be more striking.

In Live Through This, Fouhse routinely navigated emotionally intense and ethically ambiguous situations. He routinely drove Ottawa streets with heroin in his car, he tells the Ottawa Citizen. Later in the project, Stephanie recovered from emergency brain surgery in his spare bedroom. The doctors told him there was a 50/50 chance she could die at any time.

In Official Ottawa, the dynamic is utterly different. Instead of chaos, a quiet stillness prevails. Instead of a single, fragile individual, federal buildings loom impassively. Crowds wait for unseen VIPs, frozen in time by the shutter of Fouhse’s Linhof Technika. The few individuals we see stand in subtly awkward poses, dwarfed by impersonal stone backgrounds. The light is flat; the skies are a cold and uncaring gray.

It’s an austere, unsettling, subtly menacing view. And it’s not an accident.

“These are the people, places and things folks in Ottawa walk by every day and barely notice,” writes Fouhse, himself a longtime Ottawa resident. “But, if you look closely, power always reveals itself. And power, in all its forms, affects us all.”

Left: Parliament Hill with Leopard Tank; Right: Danielle D., government worker. Photos by Tony Fouhse

There are more contrasts. In Live Through This, Stephanie was a full and willing participant; Official Ottawa subjects were much less so.

In the former, both photographer and subject benefitted. Live Through This ended with Tony publishing a beautiful photobook and Stephanie in rehab.

In the latter, Tony was often intimidated by security guards for simply taking pictures of buildings, even from hundreds of metres away.

“If you look closely, power always reveals itself. And power, in all its forms, affects us all.” – Tony Fouhse

Official Ottawa is also more open-ended than Fouhse’s previous work. A crowdfunded project, he used the money to print and distribute 2,000 copies across the country through a network of volunteers and supporters (Full disclosure: I was a supporter and am listed in the credits).

Thus far, the tabloid has appeared in coffee shops, laundromats, and public restrooms across the country. “This newspaper is like a message in a bottle,” Fouhse writes in the accompanying letter. “There is no way of telling in whose hands it may land and how they might react. I like that.”

Opening of Parliament. Photo by Tony Fouhse.

Canada goes to the polls on Oct. 19. If the pundits are correct, Canadians will have either a minority government with its current Prime Minister or an entirely new PM. It’s unlikely Official Ottawa will care either way.

Official Ottawa is available from Straylight Press. Price in US$. Shipping in Canada is $5 and the US is $8. Shipping to the rest of the world only US$15, will be added at the checkout. Taxes will be added at the checkout for all Canadian deliveries.