Michael Snow

Michael Snow was born in 1929 in Toronto. A multidisciplinary artist, Snow is a painter, photographer, filmmaker and musician. He is considered among Canada's most important artists living today. Snow produced his first film in 1956. His 1967 film Wavelength proved him to be among the key filmmakers of the North American avant-garde. In the late sixties, he collaborated with a Canadian engineer on developing a mechanical arm that enabled the camera to turn in every direction and at rotary speeds controlled by the artist. This mechanical arm was used in his film La Région centrale (1971).

In the past decade, Snow has participated in every major exhibition exploring images in the modern world. These include Passages de l'image (organized by the Centre Pompidou), Projections, les transports de l'image (first presented at the Studio national des arts contemporains Le Fresnoy) and the Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon (which in 1995 celebrated the hundred years of cinema). The Art Gallery of Ontario and the Power Plant teamed up for a major retrospective, Michael Snow Project, incorporating all the media Snow has worked in. Recently, in Europe, his films and photographs were the object of the exhibition Panoramique: œuvres photographiques et films=Photographic Works and Films: 1962-1999, and in 2001, the Arnolfini Gallery presented the exhibition Michael Snow: Almost Cover to Cover. Michael Snow is a member of the Order of Canada and a knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in France. In March 2000, he won the Governor General's Award in visual and media arts for his film work.